Retroactive Application of Miller v. Alabama to Eliminate Life Sentences Imposed on Juveniles

In 2012, the Supreme Court granted certiorari to hear Miller v. Alabama, which involved two 14-year-old boys who were convicted of murder during an attempted robbery. The state court allowed the juveniles to be tried as adults. As a result, at 14-years-old, they were sentenced to life imprisonment with no chance of parole due to mandatory sentencing guidelines, which did not allow the judge to consider any factors related to the juvenile’s life. In evaluating the state’s decision, the Supreme Court ruled that life without parole for juveniles violated the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment, when mitigating factors are not considered in the sentencing. The judge writing for the majority stated:

SCOTUS Watch: Glossip v. Gross

SCOTUS Watch

Glossip v. Gross, Docket No. 14-7955,

on Appeal from the Tenth Circuit

Introduction

“From this day forward, I shall no longer tinker with the machinery of death.  For more than twenty years I have endeavored—indeed.  I have struggled—along with a majority of this Court, to develop procedural and substantive rules that would lend more than the mere appearance of fairness to the death penalty endeavor.  Rather than continue to coddle the Court’s delusion that the desired level of fairness has been achieved and the need for regulation is eviscerated, I feel morally and intellectually obligated simply to concede that the death penalty experiment has failed.”

-          Justice Harry Blackmun

In the current term of the United States Supreme Court, the Justices are set to decide a case which almost literally questions the “machinery of death” and the “death penalty experiment.”