US

Justices Reject Required Life Sentences for Juveniles

A divided Supreme Court on Monday struck down mandatory sentences of life in prison without parole in two cases involving 14-year-olds convicted of murder.

In the court's third decision since 2005 to find that tough sentences for juveniles violated the Constitution, Justice Elena Kagan, writing for the 5-4 majority, said earlier high-court rulings "make clear that a judge or jury must have the opportunity to consider mitigating circumstances before imposing the harshest possible penalty" on those under the age of 18.

The ruling follows the court's 2005 decision in Roper v. Simmons that declared juvenile executions a violation of the Eighth Amendment's ban on "cruel and unusual punishments" and a 2010 ruling that held it unconstitutional to sentence juveniles convicted of crimes other than homicide to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

One of the two defendants in Monday's ruling was Evan Miller, an Alabama youth who repeatedly bashed a man with a baseball bat in 2003 and set a fire to cover up evidence of the crime, according to Justice Kagan's opinion. The victim died. Alabama charged the assailant as an adult, with murder in the course of arson, a crime that carries a mandatory minimum sentence of life in prison without parole.

Justice Kagan ruled unconstitutional the sentences against Mr. Miller and another 14-year-old, convicted in Arkansas of capital murder after he was involved in the fatal 1999 shooting of a video-store clerk. She said the state laws mandated that each juvenile defendant "die in prison even if a judge or a jury would have thought that his youth and its attendant characteristics, along with the nature of his crime, made a lesser sentence … more appropriate."

The ruling didn't impose a categorical ban on life-without-parole sentences for juveniles, but the court's majority said the "appropriate occasions" for such a penalty "will be uncommon."

Joining Justice Kagan's opinion were Justice Anthony Kennedy, who wrote the two earlier juvenile-punishment opinions, and liberal Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor.

The court's four most conservative justices—Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito—dissented. They said decisions about the appropriate prison sentences for teenage murderers should be made by lawmakers, not by the courts.

The chief justice said a life-without-parole term for a juvenile murderer didn't violate the ban on cruel and unusual punishments because there was nothing unusual about it.

"Put simply, if a 17-year-old is convicted of deliberately murdering an innocent victim, it is not 'unusual' for the murderer to receive a mandatory sentence of life without parole," he wrote.

Justice Alito issued a separate dissent and read part of it from the bench, an unusual step. He said the ruling means that "[e]ven a 17½-year-old who sets off a bomb in a crowded mall or guns down a dozen students…must be given a chance to persuade a judge to permit his release into society."

The court's opinion said 28 states and the federal government have made a life-without-parole term mandatory for some juveniles convicted of murder in adult court. The ruling could affect the sentences of about 2,000 juveniles who are serving mandatory terms, said Bryan Stevenson, who directs the Equal Justice Initiative, a Montgomery, Ala., organization that represents indigent defendants.

Mr. Stevenson, who represented the defendants before the high court, said Monday's ruling "recognized that children need additional attention and protection in the criminal-justice system." He said he expected most of the convicts to get new sentencing hearings, although states could also commute the sentences on their own or change state laws to conform to the high-court ruling.

In previous cases involving the Eighth Amendment, the justices have been guided by "evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society," a phrase used by Chief Justice Earl Warren in a 1958 opinion. Chief Justice Roberts said decency "is not the same thing as leniency. A decent society protects the innocent from violence."

Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange said the state respected the court's decision but profoundly disagreed with it.

"It is rare that a juvenile commits the worst kind of murder," Mr. Strange said. "But when this happens, the Alabama Legislature and most other American legislatures have determined that the appropriate sentence is life without parole." He said Mr. Miller would receive a new sentencing hearing.

The office of Arkansas's attorney general said it respected the decision.
Separately, the high court stood by its 2010 Citizens United ruling lifting restrictions on corporate and union political contributions, nullifying a Montana state law that put limits on corporate electioneering.

The Montana Supreme Court had upheld the state law, and critics of Citizens United had hoped the case would serve as a vehicle for the high court to reconsider its ruling. But in an unsigned decision, the court said "there can be no serious doubt" that its Citizens United holding applies to the Montana law. Four liberal justices dissented.

Justice Kennedy wrote in his Citizens United opinion that the possibility of corruption wasn't sufficient justification to deprive corporations and unions of what he called their First Amendment right to spend as they wish on elections. Justice Stephen Breyer, writing for the dissenters in Monday's case, said Montana's experience "casts grave doubt on the Court's supposition that independent expenditures" by corporations and unions "do not corrupt or appear to do so."

Brent Kendall
25 June 2012

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