The US Supreme Court ruled that all states must retroactively apply the ban on mandatory death-in-prison sentences for juveniles.
In 2012, the Supreme Court issued an historic ruling in Miller v. Alabama, holding that mandatory life-without-parole sentences for all children 17 or younger convicted of homicide are unconstitutional. The Court wrote that requiring sentencers to consider ‘childrens’ diminished culpability, and heightened capacity for change’ should make such sentences uncommon. Following the decision in 2012 the majority of state courts applied the judgement retrospectively to people already serving sentences, but a handful of states including Louisiana refused to do so.
The decision in Montgomery v. Louisiana now requires all states to apply Miller retrospectively, which means that people who were sentenced to die in prison for crimes committed when they were children are now entitled to new sentencing hearings. Writing for the Court, Justice Kennedy explained that Miller is retroactive because it announced a substantive rule of constitutional law. Because Miller bars life without parole sentences for all but the rarest of juvenile offenders, ‘it rendered life without parole an unconstitutional penalty for a class of defendants because of their status’ – that is, juvenile offenders whose crimes reflect the transient immaturity of youth’. States must provide an opportunity for release ‘to those who demonstrate the truth of the Miller’s central intuition – that children who commit even heinous crimes are capable of change’.
Bryan Stevenson, Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative which represented the plaintiffs in the Miller decision welcomed the decision and stated ‘We’re pleased the Supreme Court made clear what we had argued all along’.
Coming the same week as the Supreme Court decision; President Obama announced that US Federal Prisons will no longer hold juveniles or low-level offenders in solitary confinement. The change will impact about 10,000 prisoners held in federal prisons. Inmates placed in solitary confinement for nonviolent crimes will no longer be permitted. The rules will also limit the time federal inmates can serve in solitary, changing the current 365 maximum in federal prisons to 60 days for a first offence.
Click here to read a copy of the judgement in Miller v. Alabama
Click here to read a copy of the judgement in Montgomery v. Louisiana
Click here to read further commentary about the case by the Equal Justice Initiative.
Click here to read a copy of the op-ed by President Barack Obama in the Washington Post