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For years, the Supreme Court sent a consistent message about kids who commit the most serious crimes: They’re still kids. They can’t be executed. They can’t get life without parole unless they kill someone—& even then, “all but the rarest of children” deserve a chance at release.
This month, things seemed to change. https://www.themarshallproject.org/2021/04/30/supreme-court-conservatives-just-made-it-easier-to-sentence-kids-to-life-in-prison
First, the Supreme Court’s new conservative majority issued a ruling that limited the impact of Miller v. Alabama, the court’s 2012 decision restricting life without parole for teenagers. https://www.themarshallproject.org/2021/04/30/supreme-court-conservatives-just-made-it-easier-to-sentence-kids-to-life-in-prison
Then, Evan Miller, the man whose case made it possible for more than 1000 juvenile lifers to one day go home, found out that he himself will never go home. He went to prison at 14 and this week a judge told him he will die there. https://twitter.com/schwartzapfel/status/1387148431173509121
Advocates fear lower court judges like the Miller’s will now feel emboldened to ignore the Miller decision’s core holding—that juvenile life without parole should be rare—hand down more of the sentences, knowing they satisfy the court’s mandate just by having the option not to.
The new high court case centered around the phrase “permanent incorrigibility,” which @SLandP told me “was made-up nonsense from the get-go.”
More important than the phrase (Kavanaugh dismissed it as a “magic-words requirement”) is the idea: must a judge formally determine that a teen is beyond hope—that he could never be rehabilitated—before sentencing him to life without parole? The new conservative majority said no.
But critics of the practice find hope in a trend that’s not likely to change now: fewer and fewer states allow JLWOP. 31 have banned it or don’t use it and they’re not the usual suspects: AR, WY, KY, ND, SD included. A bill was just introduced in LA: https://lailluminator.com/2021/04/29/its-time-for-louisiana-to-end-juvenile-life-without-parole-demario-davis-stan-van-gundy/?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=7a638194-e3d4-444f-8816-444cf9f35385
But just as we see “justice by geography” in the death penalty, there is a risk of that here too. If you commit murder as a teenager, whether you die in prison or eventually get a second chance will depend in large part on where you live. And your race. https://www.themarshallproject.org/2021/04/30/supreme-court-conservatives-just-made-it-easier-to-sentence-kids-to-life-in-prison
More on the Miller case and its associated cases at @MarshallProj https://www.themarshallproject.org/records/1963-roper-graham-miller-montgomery
