In Miller v. Alabama, the court held that mandatory life without parole for child homicide offenders violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment, because a child under the age of eighteen convicted of a homicide offense could not be sentenced to life without parole absent consideration of the child’s special circumstances, in light of the principles and purposes of child sentencing. In the wake of Miller, lower courts raised the question of whether Miller’s holding is retroactive to child offenders whose convictions and sentences were final when Miller was decided.
On January 25, 2016 the Supreme Court of the United States resolved this question of the retroactiveness of Miller when it decided the case of Montgomery v. Louisiana, holding that Miller’s prohibition on mandatory life without parole for child homicide offenders, announced a new substantive rule that under the Constitution, is retroactive on state collateral review, regardless of when a child offender’s conviction became final. The Supreme Court’s Montgomery ruling is a huge victory for the approximately 2000 plus child offenders still serving life without parole sentences across the United States, even after Miller had barred such sentences in 2012, for it now requires states to provide parole eligibility for all children currently serving life without parole.
In Montgomery, the court also strengthened and expanded their Miller holding by clarifying the following: (1) that Miller’s holding has a procedural component which prescribes a hearing where youth and its attendant characteristics are considered as sentencing factors to separate those children who may have been sentenced to life without parole, from those who may not, (2) that Miller requires a sentencing judge to do more than consider a child offender’s youth before imposing life without parole. It established that the penological justifications for life without parole collapse in light of the distinctive attributes of youth, and (3) that the Miller did bar life without parole for all but the rarest of child offenders, which makes imposition of life without parole sentences on child offenders a practical impossibility.
The Supreme Court of the United States said Miller’s conclusion that the sentence of life without parole is disproportionate for the vast majority of child offenders raises a grave risk that many are being held in violation of the Constitution, and that giving Miller a retroactive effect does not require states to relitigate sentences in every case where a child offender received mandatory life without parole. To avoid imposing an onerous burden on the states, the court recommended that a state may remedy a Miller violation by permitting child homicide offenders to be reconsidered for parole, rather than by resentencing them.
As an example of this, the court cited a Wyoming state law that made child homicide offenders eligible for parole after 25 years. The downside in Montgomery is that the court stopped short at imposing a categorical ban on sentencing child offenders to life with parole and life without parole imprisonment, though the court could have expressly done so. Even still, the Montgomery ruling is a tremendous victory for the current 2000 plus children serving life without parole in state prison systems throughout America. Now, the struggle for these child lifer prisoners to actually receive parole review and obtain parole relief to society has just begun. From the belly of the beast at Prison Radio, I am Shakaboona. Thank you for listening.
These commentaries are recorded by Noel Hanrahan of Prison Radio.
