US Supreme Court: Juveniles Sentenced to Life Can Seek Parole

The U.S. Supreme Court has offered a reprieve to as many as 2,000 men and women now serving mandatory terms of life in prison without parole for homicides they committed as juveniles. The justices also have barred life without parole sentences for people convicted of crimes other than murder that were committed before they turned 18.

The ruling stems from the case of Henry Montgomery, who was convicted of killing a deputy sheriff in Baton Rouge, Louisiana in 1963. Further, the objective of the clarification decision, as detailed by Kennedy, is to give these specific cases further consideration given that the prisoners were sentenced when they were young.

Alabama, like Louisiana, did not apply the Miller decision to past cases, but Stevenson said the state was in a minority.

The decision in Montgomery v. Louisiana issued Monday was written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, with Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas dissenting.

The ruling, which overturns a Michigan Supreme Court decision in 2014, means that almost 350 Michigan inmates charged and sentenced to life without parole for committing a murder before their 17th birthday will have a chance to argue for parole.

Monday’s decision does not expressly foreclose judges from sentencing teenagers to a lifetime in prison.

“They get pulled in, but they aren’t the shooter”, she said.

“Once a conviction has become final, whether new rules or old ones will be applied to revisit the conviction is a matter entirely within the State’s control; the Constitution has nothing to say about that choice”, Scalia wrote. However, with this case, the Supreme Court said the past ruling is more applicable to special cases.

The majority included Chief Justice John Roberts, who had dissented from the 2012 ruling.

“While every other country in the world rejects the punishment of life without parole for children, the USA remains the only country that locks up kids and throws away the key”, said Jasmine Heiss, Amnesty senior campaigner.

Levick noted that in Pennsylvania there was a mandatory sentence of life without parole for anyone convicted of first- or second-degree murder.

What the majority expects (and intends) to happen is set forth in the following not-so-subtle invitation: “A State may remedy a Miller violation by permitting juvenile homicide offenders to be considered for parole, rather than by resentencing them”. He was 17 years old at the time of his crime and was sentenced under a state law that required a sentence of life in prison without parole. But the Supreme Court has previously said such sentences should be rare, and only for the most heinous crimes.

Kennedy said the Miller ruling warranted re-opening past cases because it dealt with a substantive constitutional right. The decision was referring to laws in states where if an individual is found guilty of a certain crime, the sentence must be life imprisonment without exception.