But the officials also allowed for the possibility of release.
Detaining kids with no possibility of release cannot sit easily with our interest in protecting them".
The spectre of prisoners denied either a fair trial or the possibility of release is Orwellian.
But they are deeply divided about when sentences of life without the possibility of release are warranted.
"Life without the possibility of release is the harshest punishment for Steven Hayes," said the chief defense lawyer, Thomas Ullmann.
Their verdict will be either a sentence of life without the possibility of release or death by lethal injection.
The judgment said: "For a life sentence to remain compatible with article 3 there had to be both a possibility of release and a possibility of review".
In July 2002, home secretary David Blunkett ruled that Shipman should serve a whole-life tariff, offering him no possibility of release or parole.
So, said the appeal judges, "the law of England and Wales … does provide an offender hope, or the possibility of release, in exceptional circumstances" – just as Strasbourg demanded.
In one, Joe Sullivan was sentenced to life without the possibility of release for raping a 72-year-old woman in 1989, when he was 13.
Bono's voice often starts out low and humble, then ascends like the rock version of a classic Irish tenor as choruses proclaim the possibility of release.
