SCOTUS: All Juvenile Offenders Have The Right To Apply For Parole

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that people serving life terms for murders they committed as teenagers must have a chance to seek their freedom, a decision that could affect more than 1,000 inmates.

The justices voted 6-3 to extend a ruling in a 2012 case out of Alabama that struck down automatic life terms with no chance of parole for teenagers convicted of murder.

Monday’s decision said the states do not have to hold new sentencing hearings if they allow juvenile homicide offenders the opportunity to be released on parole. In five juvenile justice cases over the last decade, the court has consistently said developmental differences between children and adults should be reflected in their punishment.

The decision extended a 2012 ruling, which invalidated future life-without- parole sentence for juvenile murderers, to all such offenders who were given life sentences in the past.

Pennsylvania, in particular, had 482 inmates serving life without parole for crimes committed when they were juveniles, according to a legal brief filed past year.

Henry Montgomery has spent each day of the past 46 years knowing he was condemned to die in prison. “The opportunity for release will be afforded to those who demonstrate the truth of Miller’s central intuition – that children who commit even heinous crimes are capable of change”. Those under 16 would face at least 30 years behind bars or life without parole.

Convening new hearings to re-examine these underlying cases will prove problematic, attorneys general for Texas, South Carolina, Kansas and 13 other states warned in a brief urging the court to reject the claim for retroactivity. Fourteen state supreme courts have said the ruling must be applied retroactively. It also doesn’t mean judges can’t sentence minors to life in prison, just that they should consider other factors – such as background and circumstances – first. The Louisiana Supreme Court disagreed, and his challenge made it to the nation’s highest judicial body. “And if it did not, their hope for some years of life outside prison walls must be restored”.

“It’s much better to rehabilitate someone and have them become a productive member of society than to incarcerate them for life”, he said.

TOTENBERG: In his decision today, Kennedy offered that possibility to the states, telling them that they could instead parole those no longer deemed unsafe.

Three justices broke from the majority in Monday’s decision.

Justice Antonin Scalia wrote the dissenting opinion and was joined by Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito.

The D.A.’s Office also noted that “murders committed by juveniles after October 2012 are governed by a new statute that provides for a graduated sentence depending on the age of the killer and the degree of the murder”.