Sentencing Law and Policy

Fascinating Eighth Amendment ruling by Kansas appeals court about (uniquely?) extreme sex offender sentence

I have been slow to note a remarkable Eighth Amendment opinion handed down late last week by a Kansas appellate court in State v. Proctor, No. 104,697 (Kan. Ct. App. July 6, 2012) (available here). (Hat tip to Eugene Volokh.)  The lengthy opinion and its (limited?) import are hard to summarize, so I will quote in full the start of the opinion here:

In this case, the court must address the constitutionality of a sentence potentially subjecting Defendant Daniel Proctor to lifetime postrelease supervision and, in turn, to imprisonment for life without parole if he were later to commit any felony, including a property crime otherwise calling for probation.  Proctor faces that prospect because he pled guilty to a sex offense — aggravated indecent solicitation of a child — for which he has received a permissible guideline sentence of probation.  For Proctor, a man in his early 20′s, the statutory sentencing scheme could put him behind bars for 50 years if he were to shoplift a $1,000 ring or computer or to write a bad check for them.  Given Proctor’s circumstances and the peculiarly harsh result that could be inflicted on him, the sentence violates the protections against cruel and unusual punishment contained in § 9 of the Kansas Constitution Bill of Rights and the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution.  The punishment may be considered grossly disproportionate in that context and incompatible with the general purposes of incarceration as a sanction in the criminal justice system.  We, therefore, vacate the sentence imposed on Proctor to that extent and remand to the Saline County District Court for resentencing.

The governing statutes create the prospect of an exceptionally severe punishment — life in prison without parole is second only to a death sentence in its extremity — for persons convicted of designated sex offenses who then commit property crimes.  For Proctor, the disparity between his criminal conduct and that punishment reflects an imbalance of a magnitude implicating constitutional protections.  The Kansas sentencing statutes permit probation for both his underlying offense in this case and property crimes amounting to felonies.  But the commission of those two offenses in that order may lead to life in prison with no prospect for release.  Controlling authority from the United States Supreme Court and the Kansas Supreme Court construing the federal and state constitutional prohibitions on cruel and unusual punishment cannot be reconciled with that result.  The sentencing scheme exacts a punishment harsher than those for murder, kidnapping, and other crimes the Kansas Legislature has designated as more serious than Proctor’s.  It also appears to be more severe than similar statutes applied to sex offenders in the vast majority of other states.  Those are the ingredients of an unconstitutionally disproportionate punishment.

The analysis by this appellate panel to back up these conclusions is quite interesting and worth a close read by any and everyone interested in the development of modern Eighth Amendment jurisprudence.

Questioning forceful (but suspect) claims by the varied Miller dissents: the Roberts/textualism numbers

Though I still have tons of questions about what the new Eighth Amendment SCOTUS Miller ruling will come to mean (opinion here, basic questions here and here and here), I now have some first thoughts on the three intriguing Miller dissents.  Though covering some overlapping grounds (and overlapping votes), I think it is fair to short-hand these dissents using their authors and main themes: (1) the Roberts/textualism dissent, (2) the Thomas/originalism dissent, and (3) the Alito/legislative judgment dissent. 

Notably, the relatively short Miller majority opinion (perhaps wisely) does not very deeply engage with all the points made in the dissenting opinions, but there is a lot of interest and force in these dissents.  However, though seemingly forceful in various ways, I see a suspect judgment or assertion or conclusion at the heart of each dissent.  In a series of three posts, I hope to explain briefly the suspect foundation in each of these dissents.  I will start here by questioning number-crunching in the Roberts/textualism dissent in Miller.

Chief Justice Roberts' lead Miller dissent, which was signed by all the dissenters, rests on a forceful textual point set forth in these two sentences at the end of first paragraph: "The pertinent law here is the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution, which prohibits 'cruel and unusual punishments.'  Today, the Court invokes that Amendment to ban a punishment that the Court does not itself characterize as unusual, and that could not plausibly be described as such."  Though I see much force and wisdom in the Chief's concern for the term "unusual" in any interpretion of the Eighth Amendment, I think a careful and sober assessment of the data makes it quite "plausible" to characterize the sentences at issue in Miller as unusual.

First, if we focus just on Kuntrell Jackson's case before SCOTUS, it seems quite "unusual" for a teenage accomplice to a felony with no clear intent to kill and no significant criminal history to be subject to a mandatory LWOP sentence.  Though data here can be slippery, there are probably hundreds (if not thousands) of teens each year who are accomplices to felonies in which someone is killed and I suspect very few of these teenage felony-murder accomplices in any given year get a mandatory LWOP.  (Many of the teen accomplices without a criminal history, I would bet, are not even arrested or charged with murder, let alone brought into the adult system and subject to a mandatory LWOP sentence.) 

There has been, roughly speaking, about 40 years of modern LWOP sentencing, which in turn has resulted in a total of about 2500 juve killers with LWOP sentences (of which about 2000 were imposed manditorily).  I would be surprised if more than 20 of these juve LWOPers are just teenage felony-murder accomplices without a significant criminal history like Kuntrell Jackson.  Because one could (very conservatively) guess that there have been 20,000 teenage felony-murder accomplices over the last four decades, Kuntrell Jackson's sentence is fairly considered a 1 in 1000 event.  It seems quite appropriate (and surely "plausible") to describe such a rare event as "unusual." 

Of course, ever the careful and effectively dissenter, the Chief Justice does not really take on whether Kuntrell Jackson's sentence is "unusual" (and his Graham concurrence leads me to think he might have been inclined to join a very narrow opinion that just struck down Jackson's mandatory sentence, perhaps with emphasis on mens rea points stressed in Justice Breyer's concurrence).  Rather, the heart of the Chief's dissent is his complaint is that the majority in Miller has used the Eighth Amendment to "ban a punishment" (i.e., mandatory LWOP for any and all teen killers) that is not "unusual."  But, even with this wider framing, I am not sure the numbers concerning the frequency of mandatory LWOP are as compelling as the Chief suggests.

Again, as to the frequency of the sentence, we have gone 40 years to get roughly 2000 mandatory juve LWOP sentences imposed, meaning we average over this period roughly 50 such sentences per year.  In footnote 1 of his dissent, the Chief notes than DOJ statistics indicate that 1,170 juves were arrested for serious homicide in 2009.  Taking just these numbers on their face, one could assert that a juve killer getting a mandatory LWOP sentence is roughly a 1 in 23 event.  I think it is possible (and surely "plausible") to describe a 1 in 23 event as "unusual," though surely reasonable minds could differ on this front.  (To use a sports metaphor, I think it would be reasonable to say it is "unusual" when the New York Mets win the World Series, even though they have done so twice in the last 45 years.)

Moreover, and perhaps more important, the Chief has fudged the numbers here a bit when referencing the 1,170 juves arrested for serious homicide in 2009, because juve homicides are way down compared to just a decade ago.  Once again, data here can be slippery, but I think it is fair to say there were on average much closer to 2000 juve homicides per year over the last 40 years.  Using 2000 as the denominator, the odds of a juve killer getting a mandatory LWOP is now a 1 in 40 event.  Something that happens only 2.5% of the time seems to me to be "unusual."

This all said, the Chief Justice is certainly on solid ground that a mandatory LWOP sentence for a juve killer is not as unusual as the juve LWOP nonhomicide sentences at issue in Graham.  But, critically, the text of the Eighth Amendment does not demand that a punishment be "very unusual" to be unconstitutional, it only demands that a punishment be "unusual."  Further still, I do not think this number crunching holds the secret to unlocking an idealized modern Eighth Amendment jurisprudence.  But, as will be my goal in all my posts in this series on the Miller dissents, I just want to flag the reality that a key forceful claim in this lead dissent can be viewed as suspect when fully unpacked.

All juvenile defendants get narrow procedural Eighth Amendment win in Miller

Though I am still trying to figure out all the opinions in today SCOTUS Eighth Amendment ruling in Miller v. Alabama (opinion here, basics here), I think I am correct to assert that the ruling is a (surprising?) big win for any and all older juveniles sentenced to LWOP under a mandatory sentencing scheme, while also appearing to be a (surprising?) potential loss for anyone hoping or expecting the Supreme Court to declare unconstitutional any and all LWOP sentences for any and all juvenile offenders.

Here are the paragraphs from the start and end of the majority opinion in Miller per Justice Kagan which lead me to the conclusion that the Miller ruling is pretty limited and narrow as a win for juvenile defendants:

The two 14-year-old offenders in these cases were convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.  In neither case did the sentencing authority have any discretion to impose a different punishment.  State law mandated that each juvenile die in prison even if a judge or jury would have thought that his youth and its attendant characteristics, along with the nature of his crime, made a lesser sentence (for example,life with the possibility of parole) more appropriate.  Such a scheme prevents those meting out punishment from considering a juvenile’s “lessened culpability” and greater “capacity for change,” Graham v. Florida, 560 U. S. ___, ___ (2010) (slip op., at 17, 23), and runs afoul of our cases’ requirement of individualized sentencing for defendants facing the most serious penalties.  We therefore hold that mandatory life without parole for those under the age of 18 at the time of their crimes violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on “cruel and unusual punishments.”...

Graham, Roper, and our individualized sentencing decisions make clear that a judge or jury must have the opportunity to consider mitigating circumstances before imposing the harshest possible penalty for juveniles.  By requiring that all children convicted of homicide receivelifetime incarceration without possibility of parole, regardless of their age and age-related characteristics and the nature of their crimes, the mandatory sentencing schemesbefore us violate this principle of proportionality, and sothe Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.  We accordingly reverse the judgments of the Arkansas Supreme Court and Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals and remand the cases for further proceedings notinconsistent with this opinion.

I am very much drawn to this procedural approach to the issues in Miller and Jackson, in part because this was the way I urged the Court to resolve these cases in this amicus brief I filed along with my students.  But, until I have a full chance to review the holding and dicta in the Miller opinions, I am not quite yet ready to praise without reservations this new important Eighth Amendment decision.

NY Times debates "When to Punish, and When to Rehabilitate" for juve offenders

The Room for Debate section of the New York Times has this new set of pieces discussing punishments for juvenile offenders.  Here is the sections set up:

The Supreme Court is expected to rule this month on when, if ever, it is appropriate to sentence juvenile offenders to life without parole.  The arguments this spring showed the complexity of drawing the lines between child and adult, and between justice and cruelty.

When minors commit violent crimes, should they be treated differently from adults?  Is prison effective as a punishment and deterrent for juveniles, or does it harden a young person who might otherwise recover?

Here are the contribututions, with links via the commentary titles:

• "Prison Is Too Violent for Young Offenders" by Gary Scott, inmate, San Quentin

• "In Sentencing, Remember the Victims" by Jennifer Bishop-Jenkins, National Organization of Victims of Juvenile Lifers

• "Behind Bars, Teenagers Become Prey" by T.J. Parsell, writer and human rights activist

• "Adult Punishments Should Be an Option" by Charles Stimson, Heritage Foundation

• "Prison Does Not Make Good Citizens" by R. Daniel Okonkwo, D.C. Lawyers for Youth

• "The Race Factor" by Jennifer L. Eberhardt and Aneeta Rattan, Stanford University

• "Seeing Juveniles’ Maturity, and Immaturity" by Laurence Steinberg, adolescent brain researcher

• "Teenagers Too Often End Up in Solitary" by Amy Fettig, A.C.L.U.

• "The Cost of Prison, in Dollars and Lives" by Michael Jacobson, director, Vera Institute of Justice

Seeking advice on (and cites to) thoughtful state Eighth Amendment rulings

In all likelihood, we still have a few more weeks to wait for Supreme Court rulings in in Jackson v. Hobbs and Miller v. Alabama, the two big pending Eighth Amendment cases concerning the constitutionality of states sentencing 14-year-old killers to life without the possibility of parole.  In part because I hope the coming rulings in Jackson and Miller might spark and provide a foundation for a new round of interesting constitutional litigation over extreme prison sentences (and not just for young offenders), I am interested in gathering information about the most interesting and thoughtful Eighth Amendment rulings coming from state courts in recent years (particularly in the wake of the Graham ruling).

I am aware of some leading recent state court Eighth Amendment rulings in states like California and Florida and Iowa, all of which had to swiftly and directly confront the import and impact of the Graham ruling for a number of juvenile offenders serving very long prison terms for nonhomicide offenses.  But I know I have seen a few interesting and thoughtful post-Graham rulings concerning limits on adult sentences imposed by the Eighth Amendment (and/or similar state constitutional provisions) from state supreme courts in Ohio and South Dakota and others states.  And I suspect there are (lots of?) notable rulings from lower state appellate courts (both affirming and reversing long prison sentences) that I have not seen.

Ergo this "bleg" for help from readers:  Can and will folks via the comments to this post (or via an e-mail) suggest examples with cites/links to what they consider the most interesting and thoughtful Eighth Amendment rulings coming from state courts in recent years?

For purposes of this bleg, I am most interested in non-capital cases and especially those rulings involving challenges to adult sentences.  But I am happy to hear about just about any recent significant state court rulings (for or against a defendant) that thoughtfully engage with modern Eighth Amendment doctrines and/or with comparable state constitutional provisions.  Thanks!

Florida courts struggling with how to apply Graham to multi-decade juve sentences

This new AP piece, headlined "Fla. justices asked to rule on juvenile sentences," reports on how state courts in the Sunshine State are still struggling through the impact and implications of the Supreme Court's Eighth Amendment ruling limiting juve LWOP sentences for nonhomicide offenses.  Here are the details:

A three-judge appellate panel on Tuesday asked the Florida Supreme Court to decide the constitutionality of a 70-year prison sentence for a teenager convicted of attempted first-degree murder in Jacksonville.  The Florida 1st District Court of Appeal panel certified the issue to the justices as a question of great public importance.

Meanwhile, the state is appealing a decision by another 1st District panel that reversed a Pensacola inmate's 80-year sentence for a pair of armed robberies committed when he was 17.

They are among several cases arising from a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last year, also in a Florida case, that sentencing juveniles to life in prison for non-homicide crimes is unconstitutionally cruel and unusual punishment.  The high court ruling came in the case of Terrance Graham, who was initially sentenced to life in prison.  The sentence was then reduced to 25 years in prison....

The state is appealing a 1st District ruling in April that reversed Antonio Demetrius Floyd's 80-year sentence.  A three-judge appellate panel ruled a sentence that long is the functional equivalent of life in prison.  Floyd originally received a life sentence but it was reduced after the U.S. Supreme Court ruling.

Tuesday's certification came in the case of Shimeek Grindine, who was 14 when he shot a man during a 2009 robbery attempt.  The appellate court previously affirmed Grindine's sentence in December on a 2-1 vote.  The dissenting judge, James R. Wolf, wrote that he was at a loss on how to apply the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in the case of Graham, also from Jacksonville, because the Legislature abolished parole in Florida.

"Is a 60-year sentence lawful, but a 70-year sentence not?" Wolf asked. "Regardless, it is clear to me that appellant will spend most of his life in prison. This result would appear to violate the spirit, if not the letter, of the  Graham decision."

The Legislature this year considered but did not pass bills that would have addressed the issue. They would have let a judge reduce a sentence of 10 or more years for non-homicide crimes committed as a juvenile once an inmate was at least 25 years old.

George Will urges SCOTUS to find juve LWOP unconstitutional in all cases

I am intrigued and pleased to see that George Will's latest column in the Washington Post adopts the same position as I have embraced in the two juve LWOP cases, Miller and Jackson, now before the Supreme Court.  Will's column is headlined "Cruel and unusual — a test case," and here are excerpts:

Today, 221 years after the Bill of Rights was added to the Constitution, the Supreme Court is again pondering the Eighth Amendment’s proscription of “cruel and unusual punishments.” The case illustrates the complexity of construing some constitutional language in changing contexts of social science and brain science.

Evan Miller, whose five suicide attempts surely had something to do with the serious domestic abuse he suffered, was complicit in a brutal murder and in 2006 was sentenced to life in an Alabama prison without the possibility of parole. Kuntrell Jackson was involved in a video store robbery during which an accomplice fatally shot the store clerk. In 2003, Jackson was sentenced to life in an Arkansas prison without the possibility of parole. Miller and Jackson were 14 when they committed their crimes. Both were tried as adults before judges who had no discretion to impose any other sentence. Such mandatory sentences preclude judges weighing a consideration of Eighth Amendment jurisprudence — proportionality.

Before its June 26 recess, the Supreme Court will decide whether sentencing children to die in prison is cruel. It certainly is unusual: Although 2,300 current prisoners have been sentenced to life without parole for crimes committed as juveniles (age 17 or younger), just 79 prisoners in 18 states are serving sentences of life without parole for crimes committed when they were 13 or 14.

The court must consider not only what is society’s sense of cruelty but also how that sense should be shaped by what some new technologies reveal about adolescent brain biology. Shakespeare’s shepherd in “The Winter’s Tale” did not need to see brain scans to wish that “there were no age between ten and three-and-twenty, or that youth would sleep out the rest; for there is nothing in the between but getting wenches with child, wronging the ancientry, stealing, fighting.”

And with age-related laws restricting the right to drink, drive, marry, serve on juries, etc., all American states have long acknowledged adolescents’ developmental shortcomings. Neuroscience, however, now helps explain why aspects of adolescents’ brains make young people susceptible to impulsive behavior and to failing to anticipate and understand the consequences of it....

In 1958, the court said: “The [Eighth] Amendment must draw its meaning from the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.” Justice Antonin Scalia has warned: “A society that adopts a bill of rights is skeptical that ‘evolving standards of decency’ always ‘mark progress,’ and that societies always ‘mature,’ as opposed to rot.” But even the “originalist” Scalia, although disposed to construe the Constitution’s terms as they were understood when ratified, would today proscribe some late-18th-century punishments, such as public lashing and branding.

Denying juveniles even a chance for parole defeats the penal objective of rehabilitation. It deprives prisoners of the incentive to reform themselves. Some prisons withhold education, counseling and other rehabilitation programs from prisoners ineligible for parole. Denying these to adolescents in a period of life crucial to social and psychological growth stunts what the court in 2005 called the prisoner’s “potential to attain a mature understanding of his own humanity.” Which seems, in a word — actually, three words — “cruel and unusual.”

"Proportionality and Parole"

The title of this post is the title of this new article by Professor Richard Bierschbach, which is now available via SSRN.  Here is the abstract:

Commentators analyzing the Supreme Court’s watershed decision in Graham v. Florida, which prohibited sentences of life without parole for juveniles convicted of nonhomicide crimes, have generally done so in substantive proportionality terms, ignoring or downplaying parole in the process. This Article challenges that approach, focusing on the intersection of proportionality and parole as a jumping off point.

Taking parole seriously makes clear that Graham is difficult to understand solely in terms of substantive proportionality concepts like individual culpability and punishment severity. Instead, the decision can be seen as establishing a rule of constitutional criminal procedure, one that links the validity of punishment to the institutional structure of sentencing. By requiring the state to revisit its first-order sentencing judgments at a later point in time, Graham mandates a procedural space for granular, individualized, and ultimately more reliable sentencing determinations. I expose this procedural and institutional side of parole’s constitutional significance, situate it within the constitutional landscape of sentencing, and sketch some of its implications for the future of sentencing regulation.

Florida appeals court finds 80-year juve prison sentence unconstitutional under Graham

Via this new AP article, which is headlined "Fla. courts struggle with juvenile sentencing," I learned of an interesting new state appellate opinion working through the implications of the Supreme Court's Eighth Amendment ruling in Graham. Here are excerpts from the relatively brief (and quite interesting) opinion in Floyd v. Florida, No. 1D11-1983 (Fla. 1st DCA Apr. 12, 2012) (available here):

Appellant was seventeen years of age in 1998 when he committed grand theft auto and two counts of armed robbery with a firearm, which, according to the prosecutor’s description during the resentencing hearing, was a pellet gun that was “realistic looking.” The trial court initially sentenced Appellant to life imprisonment on the armed robbery counts. After Graham was issued more than a decade later, the trial court resentenced Appellant to consecutive forty-year sentences on the two armed robbery counts.... In [Graham], the Court explained that while a state is not required to guarantee eventual freedom to a juvenile offender convicted of a nonhomicide offense, it must give defendants like Graham “some meaningful opportunity to obtain release based on demonstrated maturity and rehabilitation.” Id. It also set forth that while the Eighth Amendment does not foreclose the possibility that juveniles convicted of nonhomicide crimes will remain behind bars for life, it does “forbid States from making the judgment at the outset that those offenders never will be fit to reenter society.” Id.

Since Graham was issued, we have reviewed two lengthy term-of-years sentences for juveniles who committed nonhomicide crimes. In Thomas v. State, 78 So. 3d 644, 646 (Fla. 1st DCA 2011), we noted that the Graham holding was limited to those juveniles who were sentenced to life without parole for nonhomicide crimes. Although we agreed that, at some point, a term-of-years sentence may become the functional equivalent of a life sentence, we rejected the appellant’s argument that his fifty-year concurrent sentences met that standard because, as found by the trial court, the appellant would be in his late sixties when he was released from prison, if he was required to serve the entirety of his sentence. 78 So. 3d at 646. In Gridine v. State, 37 Fla. L. Weekly D69 (Fla. 1st DCA Dec. 30, 2011), while again noting that, at some point, a term-of-years sentence may become the functional equivalent of a life sentence, we rejected the argument that a seventy-year sentence was unconstitutional.

In this case, we are faced with a situation where Appellant, if he serves the entirety of his sentence, will be ninety-seven when he is released. Even if Appellant received the maximum amount of gain time, the earliest he would be released is at age eighty-five.... This situation does not in any way provide Appellant with a meaningful or realistic opportunity to obtain release, as required by Graham. While the trial court was correct that the Eighth Amendment does not foreclose the possibility that juveniles who commit nonhomicide crimes will remain in prison for life, Graham also cautioned that states are foreclosed from making the judgment at the outset that those offenders will never be fit to reenter society. By sentencing Appellant to eighty years in prison, the trial court impermissibly made that judgment.

In reaching our decision, we are mindful of those cases, both in Florida and in other states, where the courts have deemed lengthy term-of-years sentences constitutional. See, e.g., Henry v. State, 37 Fla. L. Weekly D195 (Fla. 5th DCA Jan. 20, 2012) (holding that a ninety-year sentence for a juvenile defendant who committed nonhomicide offenses was constitutional); State v. Kasic, 265 P.3d 410, 415 (Ariz. Ct. App. 2011) (holding that a combined 139.75-year sentence for a juvenile defendant who committed nonhomicide offenses was constitutional); People v. Caballero, 119 Cal.Rptr.3d 920, 926 (Cal. App. Ct. 2011) (holding that a 110-year sentence for a juvenile defendant who committed nonhomicide offenses was constitutional). We disagree with those courts, however, that a lengthy term-of-years sentence cannot constitute the functional equivalent of a life sentence without parole. As the California appellate court reasoned in People v. Mendez, 114 Cal.Rptr.3d 870, 882-83 (Cal. Ct. App. 2010), while Graham’s holding was expressly limited to juveniles sentenced to life without the possibility of parole, courts should be guided by the principles set forth in Graham when evaluating a lengthy term-of-years sentence for a juvenile who was convicted of a nonhomicide offense. In holding that the juvenile defendant’s eighty-four-year sentence was unconstitutional, the court found that common sense dictated that a juvenile who is sentenced at the age of eighteen and who is not eligible for parole until after he is expected to die does not have a “meaningful” or, as the Supreme Court also described, “realistic” opportunity of release. 114 Cal.Rptr.3d at 883; see also United States v. Mathurin, No. 09-21075-Cr, 2011 WL 2580775 (S.D. Fla. June 29, 2011) (holding that a 307-year sentence for a juvenile who committed nonhomicide offenses was unconstitutional); People v. J.I.A., 127 Cal.Rptr.3d 141, 149 (Cal. App. Ct. 2011) (holding that the juvenile’s sentence, which had a minimum period of actual confinement of 56.5 years, was unconstitutional because the defendant would not be eligible for parole until about the time he was expected to die); People v. De Jesus Nunez, 125 Cal.Rptr.3d 616, 617 (Cal. App. Ct. 2011) (holding that the juvenile’s sentence, which precluded the possibility of parole for 175 years, was unconstitutional).

In this case, common sense dictates that Appellant’s eighty-year sentence, which, according to the statistics cited by Appellant, is longer than his life expectancy, is the functional equivalent of a life without parole sentence and will not provide him with a meaningful or realistic opportunity to obtain release. We, therefore, reverse Appellant’s forty-year consecutive sentences and remand for resentencing. In doing so, we encourage the Legislature to follow the Supreme Court’s guidance in Graham and to “explore the means and mechanisms for compliance” of its opinion. Until either the Legislature or a higher court addresses the issue, the uncertainty that has arisen in this area of the law since Graham was issued will undoubtedly continue.

Ohio Supreme Court finds required juve sex offender registration unconstitutional on numerous grounds

As reported in this lengthy official press release, the "Supreme Court of Ohio today voided as unconstitutional provisions of the Ohio Adam Walsh Act (AWA) that impose automatic lifelong registration and community notification requirements on certain juvenile sex offenders who were tried within the juvenile court system."  Here is more on this significant state Supreme Court ruling which has national implications:

In a 5-2 majority decision authored by Justice Paul E. Pfeifer, the court held that applying automatic lifetime sex offender registration and community notification requirements imposed by the AWA against an Athens County 15-year-old violated the prohibitions in the U.S. and Ohio constitutions against cruel and unusual punishment, and also violated the defendant’s constitutional right to due process of law....

ustice Pfeifer’s opinion was joined by Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor and Justices Evelyn Lundberg Stratton, Judith Ann Lanzinger and Yvette McGee Brown. Justices Terrence O’Donnell and Robert R. Cupp entered separate dissenting opinions.

The full opinions in In re C.P., No. 2012-Ohio-1446 (Ohio Apr. 3, 2012) (available here), run 53 pages and they are all must reads for any and everyone who follows juvenile justice issue or sex offender registration issues or Eighth Amendment jurisprudence.  Here is how the majority opinion gets started:

In this case we determine the constitutionality of R.C. 2152.86, which creates a new class of juvenile sex-offender registrants: public-registry-qualified juvenile-offender registrants.  These offenders are automatically subject to mandatory, lifetime sex-offender registration and notification requirements, including notification on the Internet.  We hold that to the extent that it imposes such requirements on juvenile offenders tried within the juvenile system, R.C. 2152.86 violates the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment contained in the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution and the Ohio Constitution, Article I, Section 9, and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution and the Ohio Constitution, Article I, Section 16.

Miller and Jackson: The Court Struggles to Frame the Issue

On reading the transcripts in the two juve LWOP cases that the Supreme Court heard today, Miller and Jackson, I'm struck by how confused the Justices are about how to frame the issues. The advocates certainly didn't seem to give the Court the help it was looking for.

Arguing for petitioners, Bryan Stevenson proposed a rule that seemed a bald policy proposal rather than one rooted in any legal authority: a flat ban on life without parole for defendants who were under 15 at the time of the crime, and a ban on automatic or mandatory life without parole for those between the ages of 15 and 18. He tried to rely on several states' having set thresholds of 15 or older for life without parole but had a hard time establishing a benchmark or national consensus, given that 39 states authorize life without parole for at least some juveniles for at least some crimes.

The Court seemed to have no clearer ideas about how to frame the issue. Justice Scalia repeatedly referred to the jury as a safeguard in authorizing the penalty, even though, as Justice Kennedy pointed out, juries cannot be told of the penalty, so the idea that they are authorizing the penalty is a fiction. If anything, Justice Scalia's passion for jury checks upon the government (in the Apprendi line of cases) ought to cut the other way here, where prosecutors' charging decisions trigger mandatory sentences while leaving juries in the dark.

In keeping with his formalism, Justice Scalia (as well as Justice Alito) made some fair points about the dangers of slippery slopes and distinguishing sentences of life from 60 years, 50 years, et cetera. I was surprised that neither he nor anyone else reached back to the common law's benchmarks for youths, in which those under 7 are conclusively incapable of crimes and those under 14 are rebuttably presumed incapable, according to Blackstone. That might roughly track the line Stevenson was trying to draw, except that it would erect only a presumption rather than a flat ban.

Justice Kennedy complained about the false dichotomy proposed by petitioners: that mandatory life without parole was either categorically forbidden or categorically permissible. That framing is in part attributable to Justice Kennedy's prior ruling in Graham, which rejected the Chief Justice's case-by-case approach to categorically forbid life without parole for juveniles who do not kill. I don't see the Court repudiating Graham, but neither do I think the Court will simply extend those precedents.

Justice Sotomayor, interestingly, kept emphasizing the Enmund / Tison line of capital cases limiting which minor actors in a murder can receive the death penalty. The signal seems to be that all the death penalty doctrines, which were previously cabined by the death-is-different line, are now fair game for argument in this area.

In that vein, it struck me that no one did nearly enough with the Woodson / Lockett / Eddings line of death-penalty cases, which require that the trier of fact have some discretion to mitigate penalties based on the particulars of individual cases. From the tenor of the argument, it seemed that many Justices were looking for a safety valve, a way to allow individualization for the least bad juvenile accomplices rather than for a flat ban. Some of the Justices' comments indicated that they recognized that Miller's crime was more heinous than Jackson's and might be looking for ways to differentiate the two.

If the Justices wanted to regulate such decisions, there are subtler ways to do so than extending Graham's ban. They could require that juries be informed of the penalty and affirmatively authorize the sentence, by extending either Simmons v. South Carolina or Apprendi to inform juries and require them to affirmatively authorize the penalty. That could harken back to the colonial tradition (discussed in my last post) of allowing juries flexibility to show mercy. Or the Court could forbid using life without parole as a plea-bargaining chip, so that juvenile defendants don't wind up with the longest sentence simply because they are reckless in choosing to go to trial.

As with Florence v. Burlington County earlier this term, the Court granted certiorari to address what seemed an excess of the criminal justice system, only to discover that trying to fix the problem would entangle the Court in a thicket of arbitrary line-drawing. Perhaps the difficulty of the exercise will scare them off, or perhaps they will embrace Justice Sotomayor's suggestion that the category of life without parole be whittled down further to those who personally kill, intend to kill, or attempt to kill and are not simply lookouts or getaway drivers. Predictions here are too hazardous--the actual outcome is anyone's guess.

Stephanos Bibas

Lots of media coverage anticipating SCOTUS arguments on JLWOP

Unsurprisingly, the media now has lots of discussion of kids sent to prison for life with the US Supreme Court due to hear oral argument tomorrow in Jackson v. Hobbs and Miller v. Alabama, two cases concerning the constitutionality of sentencing a 14-year-old killer to life without parole.  Here is just a sampling of some of the notable new pieces from both old and new media:

From ABC News here, "Juvenile Murderers: Is Life Without Parole Unconstitutional?"

From the Chicago Tribune here, "For young killers, 'a chance to have a chance'; Supreme Court to consider whether a life sentence without parole is too harsh for juveniles"

From the Daily Beast here, "Ex-Prisoners Say Life Term Is Cruel for Teens, As Case Hits High Court"

From UPI here, "Under the U.S. Supreme Court: When children commit murder"

In addition, a large number of news outlets have recent editorials urging SCOTUS to declare these juve LWOP sentences always unconstitution, including CNN and the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times and the Washington Post and lots of other smaller media outlets from all around the nation (as evidenced here and here and here).

Some recent related posts on Jackson and Miller cases:

• Supreme Court grants cert on two Eighth Amendment LWOP challenges for 14-year-old murderers!
• Basic background on Jackson and Miller, the new SCOTUS juve LWOP cases
• Briefs available, and jurisprudential challenges clear, in Jackson and Miller JLWOP cases
• Notable early prediction on what SCOTUS will do with juve LWOP in Jackson and Miller
• "Graham on the Ground"
• Does Graham create constitutional problems for juve LWOP for murder accomplice?
• "Teen killers get inconsistent sentences"
• "The Supreme Court and the Sentencing of Juveniles in the United States: Reaffirming the Distinctiveness of Youth"
• "Juvenile Criminal Responsibility: Can Malice Supply the Want of Years?"
• Great early commentary on SCOTUS taking "Another Bite at the Graham Cracker"
• "The Lives of Juvenile Lifers: Findings from a National Survey"
• Lengthy new New Yorker piece on juve LWOP and 14-year-old Michigan murderer

Taking stock of Michigan's interests in JLWOP issues before SCOTUS

A week from tomorrow, the US Supreme Court will hear oral argument in Jackson v. Hobbs and Miller v. Alabama, two cases concerning the constitutionality of sentencing a 14-year-old killer to life without parole.  As I have said before, all the primary briefing and amicus briefing in Jackson (linked here) and Miller (linked here) suggest that many SCOTUS Justices are likely to find these cases quite vexing in the wake of their Eighth Amendment work in Roper and Graham. 

And, as a new series of articles appearing in local papers, there are many states beyond these involved in the prosecutions before SCOTUS that will be following these cases very closely.  In particular, as this article from Michigan highlights, a few states that never before had to worry much about the Supreme Court's Eighth Amendment jurisprudence might have its criminal justice world rocked by Jackson and Miller.  The article appears to be the first in a week-long series gearing up for the SCOTUS arguments, and it is headlined "Judgment Day for Michigan's juvenile lifers: The U.S. Supreme Court considers banning life without parole for minors." Here are some excerpts:

He was 14 years, 11 months and 1 day old.  That night TJ Tremble rode his bike to the home of Peter and Ruth Stanley.  He had the .22-caliber rifle given him by his dad.  He had alcohol in his belly, some also from his dad.  And, police say, he had murder on his mind.

Before daylight, the Michigan youth would be behind bars for the rest of his life.  Or maybe not.  Next week, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments on whether mandatory life sentences are too cruel for anyone so young.  It will be exactly 14 years, 11 months and 1 day since Tremble got on his bike.

Now 29, is it possible he has changed in the second half of his life, or that he can change with more time?  Should he at least have the consideration to one day walk free?  Or does death make it different?

In a state with more “juvenile lifers” than almost any other, the answers will resonate throughout Michigan as the high court addresses this: Are life sentences, without any chance of parole, unconstitutional even for juveniles who commit unthinkable crimes?  If the court’s earlier rulings are an indication, the answers could be yes....

An MLive Media Group investigation last November detailed how mandatory sentencing laws and get-tough reforms propelled Michigan near the top of the nation in juvenile lifers. Only Pennsylvania has more.

Nearly two dozen inmates were profiled.  Several had not committed the killing, but were present.  Sometimes the accomplices got more time than the killer, a quirk of mandatory sentencing laws, rejected pleas and juries.

In the midst of the series, the Supreme Court announced it would consider whether juveniles are too impulsive, their brains too underdeveloped, their remaining lives too long to receive the same sentences as adults in death cases.

This story, and stories to come this week, are meant to explore what that could mean for Michigan.  At present, 359 inmates are serving life in the state for crimes committed as minors, one out of seven nationally, according to MLive’s updated analysis.  The number was one higher until last month, when a prisoner from Kalamazoo was resentenced to a parolable term -- 33 years after he fled a grocery store robbery.  His partner stayed behind and killed the owner.

Six of Michigan’s 359 were 14 at the time of their crime -- the same as two inmates whose cases are being considered by the Supreme Court....

The nation’s youngest lifers are small compared to the 2,500 overall.  Seventy-three were 14 and 13 at the time of their crimes, according to Supreme Court filings.  The six serving time in Michigan for crimes as 14-year-olds are all males, as are most of the state’s juvenile lifers.  Unlike others, they are equally split between blacks and whites, and rural and urban backgrounds.

That’s contrary to the state’s juvenile lifer population overall: 69 percent black and largely from urban areas, according to MLive’s analysis.  Most were 17 at the time of their crime, but 45 percent were 16 and younger.  Wayne County sentenced the most, 41 percent, followed well back by Oakland, Genesee, Kent and Saginaw counties.

Of the class of 14-year-old lifers, all were sentenced after Jan. 1, 1997.  That’s when the age group was added to those who prosecutors could automatically try as adults for serious crimes.

Some recent related posts on Jackson and Miller cases:

• Supreme Court grants cert on two Eighth Amendment LWOP challenges for 14-year-old murderers!
• Basic background on Jackson and Miller, the new SCOTUS juve LWOP cases
• Briefs available, and jurisprudential challenges clear, in Jackson and Miller JLWOP cases
• Notable early prediction on what SCOTUS will do with juve LWOP in Jackson and Miller
• "Graham on the Ground"
• Does Graham create constitutional problems for juve LWOP for murder accomplice?
• "Teen killers get inconsistent sentences"
• "The Supreme Court and the Sentencing of Juveniles in the United States: Reaffirming the Distinctiveness of Youth"
• "Juvenile Criminal Responsibility: Can Malice Supply the Want of Years?"
• Great early commentary on SCOTUS taking "Another Bite at the Graham Cracker"
• "The Lives of Juvenile Lifers: Findings from a National Survey"
• Lengthy new New Yorker piece on juve LWOP and 14-year-old Michigan murderer

Briefs available, and jurisprudential challenges clear, in Jackson and Miller JLWOP cases

I had the great pleasure yesterday to serve as a judge in the final round of OSU's moot court competition (with two terrific real Ohio jurists, as detailed here), and the case being argued was Miller v. Alabama, one of the two cases to be heard by SCOTUS next month concerning the constitutionality of sentencing a 14-year-old killer to life without parole.  These oral arguments, combined with all of the primary briefing and amicus briefing in Miller (linked here) and the companion case Jackson v. Hobbs (linked here), confirmed my instinct that many SCOTUS Justices are likely to find these cases quite vexing in the wake of their work in Roper and Graham.

Regular readers likely will not be surprised to hear that I am hoping the Supreme Court find the LWOP sentences imposed in Jackson and Miller to be unconstitutional.  But readers may be surprised to hear that I continue to be somewhat concerned by the Justices' decision in Graham to adopt a bright-line approach to the Eighth Amendment rather than the more nuanced case-by-case approach as was suggested by Chief Justice Roberts in his Graham concurrence.  And my concerned is heightened because the advocates and amici in Jackson and Miller are understandably inclined to push bright-line arguments: the defense side urges an Eighth Amendment rule that JLWOP is always unconstitutional (at least for younger juves), while the states seek a ruling that JLWOP us never unconstitutional for the crime of first-degree murder.

For a bunch of reasons (only some of which are set forth in this amicus brief that I put together along with a group of my students for these cases), I have an inherent disaffinity for rigid and simplistic bright-line rules at sentencing.  And, especially as the Justices seem finally ready to place a few (long overdue) constitutional limits on extremely severe prison sentences, I think Eighth Amendment jurisprudence would benefit from more nuanced case-by-case developments than by adoption (or rejection) of various bright-line rules.  Moreover, the case-specific offense and offender facts in Miller and especially in Jackson, seem to make lead me to think that embrace of bright-line rules in these cases could end up doing more long-term harm than good to sound constitutional (and sub-constitutional) sentencing jurisprudence.

Lengthy new New Yorker piece on juve LWOP and 14-year-old Michigan murderer

The January 2, 2012 issue of The New Yorker (which had an awesome cover I could not avoid posting) has this lengthy piece discussing life without parole sentences for juvenilines. The piece, authored by Rachel Aviv, is titled simply "No Remorse: Should a teen-ager be given a life sentence?".  Here is the abstract provided by the magazine's website:

Shortly after midnight on March 6, 2010, Dakotah Eliason sat in a chair in his bedroom with a .38-calibre pistol in his hands, thinking about what the world would be like if he didn’t exist.  Earlier that night, Dakotah, who was fourteen, had taken his grandfather’s loaded gun off the coatrack.  Dakotah wondered if he was ready to die, and contemplated taking someone else’s life instead.  He walked into the living room and stared at his grandfather, Jesse Miles, who was sleeping on the couch. A retired machinist and an avid hunter, Jesse often fell asleep while watching the Discovery Channel.  For forty-five minutes, Dakotah sat on a wooden chair, three feet from his grandfather, and talked to himself quietly, debating what to do next. If he got hand towels from the bathroom, he could gag his grandpa. If he used a steak knife, the whole thing might be quieter.  He figured he’d use the cordless phone on his bed to report the crime.  He felt as if he were watching a movie about himself.  Finally, at just after three in the morning, he raised the handgun, his arms trembling, and shot his grandfather in the head.  “Man, I shot Papa!” he shouted.  He put the gun on the floor and rushed into his grandmother Jean’s bedroom. She yelled for Dakotah to call 911. When officers from the police department in Niles, a rural town in southeast Michigan, arrived seven minutes later, Dakotah was waiting outside next to his grandmother.

Tells about Dakotah’s arrest and his trial as an adult for first-degree murder, which in Michigan carries a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.  Discusses the history and evolution of the American juvenile justice system. Although judges have long been attuned to the difficulty of trying mentally ill defendants, there is little recognition that people may be incompetent to stand trial because of their age. Each year, more than two-hundred thousand offenders younger than eighteen are tried as adults, yet only about half of them understand the Miranda warning.  Discusses recent and upcoming Supreme Court cases on the sentencing of juveniles.  Dakotah was found guilty of first-degree homicide and sentenced to life in prison without parole.  Writer visits Dakotah in prison.  Discusses his relations with family and with other prisoners.

This piece is quite timely as the top-side briefs are soon to be filed in the big Eighth Amendment juve LWOP cases of Jackson and Miller.  According to the docket information at the SCOTUS website, the petitioners' briefs are due to be filed on January 9, 2012 (and that, in turn, means the amicus briefs to be filed in support of the juve defendants will be filed by January 16, 2012).  I am very interested to see how both petitioners and amici develop their arguments in these cases because there are so many distinct ways to pitch the argument that their sentences are constitutionally problematic.

A few recent related posts on Jackson and Miller and related issues:

• What might SCOTUS be doing with long-held cases involving 14-year-olds serving LWOP?
• Supreme Court grants cert on two Eighth Amendment LWOP challenges for 14-year-old murderers!
• Basic background on Jackson and Miller, the new SCOTUS juve LWOP cases
• Notable early prediction on what SCOTUS will do with juve LWOP in Jackson and Miller
• "Graham on the Ground"
• Does Graham create constitutional problems for juve LWOP for murder accomplice?
• "The Supreme Court and the Sentencing of Juveniles in the United States: Reaffirming the Distinctiveness of Youth"
• "Juvenile Criminal Responsibility: Can Malice Supply the Want of Years?"
• Great early commentary on SCOTUS taking "Another Bite at the Graham Cracker" 

Great early commentary on SCOTUS taking "Another Bite at the Graham Cracker"

Scott Hechinger, who wrote one of the first thorough reviews of the Supreme Court's Eighth Amendment work in Graham (first discussed here), now has written this commentary for Georgetown Law Journal's online companion, Ipsa Loquitur, which explores the two new juve LWOP cases recently taken up by the Court.  The piece's full title is "Another Bite at the Graham Cracker: The Supreme Court’s Surprise Revisiting of Juvenile Life Without Parole in Miller v. Alabama and Jackson v. Hobbs," and here are snippets:

The Supreme Court’s decision this week to review the constitutionality of life-without-parole sentences imposed upon individuals convicted of homicide crimes committed at age fourteen and younger in Miller v. Alabama and Jackson v. Hobbs stunned sentencing law advocates and Court watchers, myself included.  This commentary will contextualize these two grants of certiorari within the Court’s shifting Eighth Amendment jurisprudence and the broader debate over the harshest forms of juvenile sentencing....

Miller and Jackson give the Supreme Court the opportunity to decide whether life without parole is unconstitutional when imposed on an individual fourteen years or younger (1) for a homicide offense, (2) as a result of a mandatory sentencing scheme, or (3) as a non-triggerman accomplice without a showing of “intent to kill.”  Notably, the cases also ask the court to recognize a new, distinct category of defendants — or subcategory of juveniles — deserving different treatment under the Eighth Amendment: those fourteen and younger....

The two somewhat more straightforward of these questions are (1) whether mandatory JLWOP is unconstitutional and (2) whether non-triggerman accomplice murder where no “intent to kill” is present falls within the ambit of Graham.  In both cases, the plain language of Graham itself seems to compel the affirmative answers the petitioners seek.

As to the mandatory nature of the sentencing schemes, the Graham court itself explicitly noted that “criminal procedure laws that fail to take defendants’ youthfulness into account at all would be flawed.”  Even Chief Justice Roberts, concurring in the judgment as to Terrance Graham’s sentence specifically, but arguing forcefully against the bright line drawn by the majority, demanded that sentencing judges be able to take the defendant’s youth into account on a case-by-case basis.  As to the issue in Jackson of whether non-triggerman accomplice liability should be considered “homicide” or “nonhomicide,” as already discussed above, the heart of Graham’s holding was the recognition that “when compared to an adult murderer, a juvenile offender who did not kill or intend to kill has a twice diminished moral culpability.”

The Court, therefore, could — and may — decide to simply rule narrowly in both cases, foregoing altogether the third, yet more fundamental question of whether children fourteen and younger are a distinct class of juveniles, who require greater Eighth Amendment protection — where JLWOP is unconstitutional in all circumstances, including homicide — than older juveniles aged fifteen to seventeen.  Though the Supreme Court successfully dodged the issue last year by dismissing Sullivan, I find it hard to imagine a repeat this time around.  The strength of Miller and Jackson, and the reason I think the Court was willing to grant certiorari so close in time to Graham, derives from this urged distinction between a “young adolescent” and “older teen.”  This distinction is necessary to allow the Court, if a majority is reached, to rule that JLWOP is unconstitutional for murder without overturning Graham....

Perhaps the clearest distinction ... between the two age categories seems to be in national sentencing consensus.  For while there are currently over 2,500 fifteen-to-seventeen year olds serving JLWOP for homicide in forty-one states, there are only seventy-three children age fourteen and younger who have been sentenced to JLWOP in only eighteen states (compared to the approximately 129 juveniles of any age sentenced to JLWOP for nonhomicide offenses found to be “exceedingly rare” in Graham).  This “extreme rarity” — as the petitions put it — is even more striking considering that over the last twenty years 3,632 children age fourteen and younger were arrested for homicide, meaning that they received a life-without-parole sentence only two percent of the time.

A few recent related posts on Jackson and Miller and related issues:

• What might SCOTUS be doing with long-held cases involving 14-year-olds serving LWOP?
• Supreme Court grants cert on two Eighth Amendment LWOP challenges for 14-year-old murderers!
• Basic background on Jackson and Miller, the new SCOTUS juve LWOP cases
• Notable early prediction on what SCOTUS will do with juve LWOP in Jackson and Miller
• "Graham on the Ground"
• Does Graham create constitutional problems for juve LWOP for murder accomplice?
• "The Supreme Court and the Sentencing of Juveniles in the United States: Reaffirming the Distinctiveness of Youth"
• "Juvenile Criminal Responsibility: Can Malice Supply the Want of Years?"

Notable early prediction on what SCOTUS will do with juve LWOP in Jackson and Miller

As first noted here, this last Monday the Supreme Court grant cert in two cases, Miller v. Alabama and Jackson v. Hobbs (which comes from Arkansas), involving life without parole sentences imposed on two defendants convicted of murders committed when they were only 14-years-old.   In this Boston Globe commentary about the cases, which is headlined "Supreme Court should rule against JLWOP," Professor James Alan Fox has this notable prediction about these cases:

If I were a betting man, I would wager heavily that the petitioners will indeed prevail.  In earlier cases before it, the Court has ruled that executing juveniles is unconstitutional as is life without parole for non-homicide juvenile cases.  In both instances, the Court was convinced that teenagers are different from adults in terms of emotional maturity and cognitive development, making them less culpable no matter how heinous the crime. Clearly, “adult time for adult crime” is little more than a catchy slogan.

In my view, the question is not so much whether the Court will overturn the sentences given Jackson and Miller, but how broadly the ruling will apply.  The Court could limit its decision to the youngest of defendants rather than all juveniles.  It also could apply its ruling to a narrow set of circumstances, such as only felony-murder, joint ventures, or cases with compelling mitigation.

This prediction and follow-up question seem spot-on to me, and I would add the predictive observation that not just Justice Kennedy, but also Chief Justice Roberts, are likely to prove to be key swing votes determining the outcome and scope of the decisions in Jackson and Miller. 

A few recent related posts on Jackson and Miller and related issues:

• What might SCOTUS be doing with long-held cases involving 14-year-olds serving LWOP?
• Supreme Court grants cert on two Eighth Amendment LWOP challenges for 14-year-old murderers!
• Basic background on Jackson and Miller, the new SCOTUS juve LWOP cases
• "Graham on the Ground"
• Does Graham create constitutional problems for juve LWOP for murder accomplice?
• "The Supreme Court and the Sentencing of Juveniles in the United States: Reaffirming the Distinctiveness of Youth"
• "Juvenile Criminal Responsibility: Can Malice Supply the Want of Years?"

Basic background on Jackson and Miller, the new SCOTUS juve LWOP cases

This AP story, which reports on the Supreme Court's important decision today to grant review in two cases involving Eighth Amendment challenges to life without parole sentences (basics here), provides this background on the defendants and crimes now to be assessed by the Justices:

The justices will examine a pair of cases from the South involving young killers who are serving life sentences for crimes they committed when they were 14.

Both cases were brought by the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Ala. The institute said that life without parole for children so young “is cruel and unusual” and violates the Constitution.  The group says roughly six dozen people in 18 states are under life sentences and ineligible for parole for crimes they committed at 13 or 14.

Kuntrell Jackson was sentenced to life in prison in Arkansas after the shooting death of a store clerk during an attempted robbery in 1999.  Another boy shot the clerk, but because Jackson was present he was convicted of capital murder and aggravated robbery.

Evan Miller was convicted of capital murder during the course of arson.  A neighbor, while doing drugs and drinking with Miller and a 16-year-old boy, attacked Miller. Intoxicated, Miller and his friend beat the man and set fire to his home, killing the 52-year-old man. Miller’s friend testified against him, and got life in prison with the possibility of parole.

The picture posted here comes from this EJI slide show of a number of youngsters who were sentenced to LWOP for crimes committed at age 14 or younger.  The picture is of Evan Miller, though his age in this picture in not clear and the slide show caption indicates Miller has just turned 18.  A later slide in the slide show reports that "over 60% of all 13 and 14-year-old children sentenced to death in prison in the U.S. are people of color."

I will be doing lots of posting with background on these two cases in the run-up to oral argument (which I expect will be in March).  In the meantime, here are links to the state court rulings to be reviewed by the Justices: Miller v. Alabama and Jackson v. Hobbs.  Both rulings provide a bit more background on the defendants' crimes and both rejected the Eighth Amendment arguments that these defendants have now before the Supreme Court.

Supreme Court grants cert on two Eighth Amendment LWOP challenges for 14-year-old murderers!

In this post last week, I asked "What might SCOTUS be doing with long-held cases involving 14-year-olds serving LWOP?".  This morning we got an answer via the Supreme Court's new order list: getting ready to grant cert and thereby tee up the biggest constitutional sentencing cases for the current SCOTUS Term!!

I do not yet know the details that surround the crimes and administration of LWOP punishments in Miller v. Alabama and Jackson v. Hobbs (which comes from Arkansas).  But I do know that that Miller and Jackson are now the two most important sentencing cases now on the Supreme Court's docket for the current Term.

I will have lots and lots and lots to say about these cases in the weeks and months ahead, but I will start by simply affording kudos to the Justices for taking on this important post-Graham issue head-on rather than dodging it for a few more years.

A few recent related posts from just the last few months:

• What might SCOTUS be doing with long-held cases involving 14-year-olds serving LWOP?
• "Graham on the Ground"
• Does Graham create constitutional problems for juve LWOP for murder accomplice?
• "The Supreme Court and the Sentencing of Juveniles in the United States: Reaffirming the Distinctiveness of Youth"
• "Juvenile Criminal Responsibility: Can Malice Supply the Want of Years?"

Detailed coverage of Michigan's juve LWOP policies and practices

Michigan's newspaper are collectively doing an amazing job providing both depth and breath to their coverage of Michigan's recent history and continuing practice of sentencing a significant number of serious juvenile offenders to life without the possibility of parole.  This lead article in this series, headlined "Why Michigan has more juvenile life sentences than almost any other state," has lots of background and data on this notable sentencing phenomenon, and the piece gets started this way:

They were teenagers once, and did horrible things, or were in horrible places. People died. Sometimes at their hands; sometimes not. But they were present. And for that, they were told they will die, too, in prison.

These are Michigan’s “juvenile lifers,” although most are much older now, sentenced to life in prison without chance of parole. And there are more in this state than in almost any other.

There is Keith Maxey, wounded in a drug theft gone bad. He was unarmed and fled, but another man was killed. A jury found the 16-year-old just as responsible as if he had pulled the trigger. Except the shooter got a lighter sentence.

There, too, are identical twins David and Michael Samel, arrested at 17 for beating a pool hall worker to death. Michael pleaded to a reduced charge and was released in 2009. David took his chances with a jury. He is in the 30th year of life without parole.

And there is Cedric King, 14 when he helped set up a marijuana thief to be killed. Except the court thought he was a year older, and the victim survived. Still, confusion has persisted for years over whether he was given the state’s severest punishment, or something less, a Booth Michigan investigation found.

As a federal judge in Detroit weighs whether such sentences are unconstitutional, reporters from seven newspapers and MLive.com spread out across the state. They interviewed nearly two dozen inmates, including some who committed their crimes before they could drive.  They also talked to victims’ families, prosecutors, judges and lawmakers.   What they found was regret and bitterness, anger and forgiveness.  They also found an issue measured more in shades of gray than black and white.

Ask Shirley Schwartz what her brother would think of imprisoning juveniles for life, and she pauses. “That’s a really difficult question,” she finally says. Her college professor brother was “very liberal,” she recalls, an advocate for his urban neighborhood in Grand Rapids’ Heritage Hill.  That was where he met his killers; Jerry Freid died after being beaten to death with a baseball bat during a burglary by a 16- and a 17-year-old.

Ask Schwartz the same question, what she thinks of life sentences for juveniles, and she does not hesitate.   “I never believed in the death penalty,” she says. “After this happened, I was pretty sure I could pull the switch. You can afford to be a liberal when it doesn’t touch you.” Told one of her brother’s killers died in prison, Schwartz says one word. “Good.”

Michigan spends more than $10 million a year to house more juvenile lifers than all but one other state, Pennsylvania. In all, 358 inmates are serving life sentences for crimes committed from ages 14 to 17.  One in five has been in prison 25 years or longer. The oldest is 67, now that two older lifers have died.

All this could change.  A federal lawsuit pending in Detroit claims life without parole for juveniles 17 and younger constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.  It seeks mandatory parole reviews when young inmates reach 21, then every five years after. The lawsuit has had early success.  A judge in July threw out the claims of eight inmates imprisoned since their teens, ruling too much time had passed. But he allowed one inmate to move forward — Keith Maxey.

Deborah LaBelle, the lawsuit’s lead attorney, says she has met with about 100 of the inmates and corresponded with more than 300.  She blames a “toxic combination” in Michigan of juvenile reforms, mandatory sentences and immature judgment she says puts minors at a disadvantage in adult courts.

I find the the stories of— and constitutional challenges to — juve LWOP in Michigan to be especially interesting and important because Michigan was the first US state to abolish the death penalty way back in the 1840s.  It seems notable that the state's historic disaffinity for the ultimate punishment of death did not prevented it from embracing its functional equivalent in modern times.  Against this backdrop, one can also argue that the Supreme Court's Eighth Amendment rulings in Roper and Graham ought to have even more bite in Michigan: if those rulings are understood dynamically to prohibit giving juvenile offenders the most severe sentences available to adult, then arguably juvenile should not be able to receive LWOP for any crime in any state that does not have capital punishment.