Andrew Cohen posts, "If You Think Monday Was Bad at the Supreme Court ...," at the Atlantic. As usual, Cohen analysis is a must-read. Here's an excerpt:
It is a shame on many levels that Miller came down on a day when it was overshadowed by other news from the Supreme Court. For in Miller v. Alabama, we see both the clear continuation of a trend on the Court -- and the passing of a torch. Even though Justice Kagan wrote the majority opinion in Miller, it was largely Justice Kennedy's precedent that she was following. More than that, it was Justice Kennedy (as senior member of the majority) who assigned the opinion to Justice Kagan to write.
Justice Kennedy is central to this story because he's literally written the law upon which Miller is based. In the beginning, there was Atkins v. Virginia, a 2002 case in which Justice Kennedy signed on to Justice John Paul Stevens' 6-3 ruling outlawing the execution of mentally retarded capital defendants. Next came Roper v. Simmons, in 2005, in which Justice Kennedy, writing for a 5-4 majority, outlawed capital punishment for murderers who committed their crimes before age 18.
Next came Graham v. Florida in 2010, in which Justice Kennedy, writing for another slender majority, outlawed life sentences for juvenile offenders who committed non-homicide crimes. "By denying the defendant the right to reenter the community," Justice Kennedy wrote, "the State makes an irrevocable judgment about that person's value and place in society. This judgment is not appropriate in light of a juvenile non homicide offender's capacity for change and limited moral culpability."
The Miller case was designed to explore one step further -- could mandatory life sentences for convicted murderers also run afoul of the "cruel and unusual punishment" clause of the Eighth Amendment? When I wrote a piece about the oral argument in the case back in March, I was struck by how many of the justices have children. I wondered at the time whether, in some way, their roles as parents would impact their perceptions of the issues raised in the case. Now I have my answer.
The essence of all these cases, including Miller, is that criminal defendants, especially those who are mentally, intellectually, and emotionally vulnerable, ought to be afforded a level of "individualized sentencing" that eschews "mandatory'' sentences. It's neater and more politically popular for state legislators to sentence offenders in broad categories. But as we have seen in so many capital cases, as we have seen in so many other cases, just because these classifications are convenient doesn't make them constitutional.
"Shall we lock up a child and throw away the key?" is George Will's Washington Post and syndicated column.
Because of their offenses, both Jackson and Miller were automatically tried as adults. Both were sentenced under mandatory sentencing laws.
On Monday, Justice Elena Kagan, joined by Anthony M. Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor, held that the Eighth Amendment prohibits such sentences when they are mandatory. Previously, the court had held that, regarding children, such sentences are akin to the death penalty, which the court said requires individuation — consideration by sentencing authorities of each defendant’s characteristics and crime.
This ruling extends two others, one holding that the Eighth Amendment bars capital punishment for children under 18, the other that it bars life without parole for a juvenile convicted of a non-homicide offense. These decisions held that regarding culpability, and hence sentencing, children are constitutionally unlike adults. The decisions came in the context of accumulating scientific evidence about increased impulsivity and diminished responsibility because of adolescent brain development.
And:
The dissenters were right that a practice can be both constitutional and reprehensible. Even if sentencing 14-year-olds to die in prison is the latter — and it is — whether it is the former depends largely on the infrequency of such sentences. It is, however, to be hoped that the case the court decided Monday might prompt changes in social thinking that will give other cruel punishments, such as protracted solitary confinement, the infrequency requisite for making them sufficiently unusual as to be unconstitutional.
At the Dallas Morning News Views Blog, editorial writer Jim Mitchell posts, "High Court ruling presents a juvenile justice issue — even in Texas."
The Supreme Court has said life-without-parole is unconstitutional. But about three years ago, Texas abolished mandatory life without parole for anyone under age 17. So it would seem that Texas was ahead of the curve. However, there are 27 people in Texas prisons who were sentenced to life without parole before they turned 18, and the High Court ruling makes those cases problematic.
When the Supreme Court ruled in 2005 that death penalty for juveniles violated the Constitution, Perry commuted the death sentences for 28 prisoners on death row who were 17; those sentences were rolled into life sentences.
It is pretty clear that some sort of re-sentencing is necessary. The question is how it should be done.
"'Elite' Supreme Court sides with science and juveniles," by Jonathan Zimmerman at the Christian Science Monitor. Zimmerman teaches history and education at New York University.
Did the Supreme Court embrace an “elite vision” on Monday when it struck down state laws mandating life imprisonment for juvenile murderers?
That’s what Justice Samuel Alito said, in an angry dissent from the bench. By invalidating such laws, Mr. Alito fumed, the court’s 5-4 majority assumed that it knew better than the 28 state legislatures that have authorized mandatory life sentences without the possibility of parole for killers younger than 18.
But the court’s majority really does know better. And there’s a simple reason for that: It relied on science – in particular, the science of adolescent brain development.
"A special status for violent children," is by Jessica S. Henry for the Bergen (NJ) Record. She is associate professor in the Department of Justice Studies at Montclair State University.
Although the court did not foreclose the possibility of life-without-parole sentences for children, it recognized that “appropriate occasions for sentencing juveniles to this harshest possible penalty will be uncommon.”
A sentence of life without parole reflects the belief that there are offenders who are so dangerous or who have committed a crime so heinous that they can never and should never be released. When a life-without-parole sentence is imposed on a child, particularly when it is imposed as a mandatory sentence, we make the determination at the time of sentencing that this child is forever beyond redemption.
Miller permits us to question that presumption because it requires children to be recognized as not yet fully formed people who carry the potential for change.
Slate features an exchange between Emily Bazelon and Judge Richard Posner as part of it's Supreme Court Year in Review series. Bazelon writes, "The justices seem to understand that juveniles aren’t like the rest of us."
I see this as a fairly small but still significant step in expanding the definition of cruel and unusual punishment—the Eighth Amendment standard for declaring a sentence off limits. It’s incremental because two years ago, the court ruled unconstitutional mandatory LWOP for teenagers who commit crimes other than murder. Today, the court simply extended the reasoning of that ruling, Graham v. Florida, to teenage killers. Not surprising, right? Especially since the whole idea behind Graham was that minors are less culpable than adults in part because their brains aren’t fully developed. Once again today, the court relied on the research of Laurence Steinberg at Temple University, whose studies of the adolescent brain have been crucial to this line of cases. Steinberg has found that teenagers tend to have less impulse control and more proclivity for risk, and as Kagan says, these findings mean the court’s decisions rest “not only on common sense—on ‘what any parent knows’—but on science and social science as well.”
I don’t want to imply, though, that Miller was a slam dunk. At oral argument, it seemed far from clear that five justices were willing to rule out mandatory LWOP for everyone up to age 18, no matter how brutal their crimes. It’s one thing to say that the judge should have had a more merciful option than life in prison for Kuntrell Jackson, who was 14 when he was convicted and sentenced for robbing a video store where a clerk was fatally shot, when Jackson didn’t fire the gun himself. It’s another to worry about the fate of Evan Miller, who Kagan acknowledges committed a “vicious murder” at 14, when he and a friend beat a neighbor and set fire to his trailer after drinking and getting high. But Kagan makes the best of these facts by noting Miller’s history of abuse and neglect at the hands of his parents.
The Slate conversation continues with "Justices should use more than their gut and “brain science” to decide a case," by Judge Posner.
I am struck by the court's reference to "brain science." The court has learned from brain science that teenagers are immature! But we knew that. The problem with using it as a basis for distinguishing between murderers of different ages is that many adult murderers have problems with their brains, too. Why is it not cruel and unusual to sentence them to life in prison? A categorical distinction between a 17-year-old and an 18-year-old seems arbitrary, and in any event a reflection of feelings about children (if teenagers can be called children) rather than of the teachings of brain science. If the court had said—what I imagine the justices in the majority feel, that emotion dictated the outcome—that a sentence of life imprisonment (with no parole of course) imposed on a 14-year-old is extremely distasteful, it would have the considerable virtue of candor.
"Supreme Court ruling on juveniles is a partial victory," by James Alan Fox of Northeastern University, and a regular contributor to the Globe.
MONDAY’S 5-4 Supreme Court decision disallowing mandatory life sentences without parole for defendants convicted of murder perpetrated before their 18th birthday moves us significantly closer to a rational system for punishing young offenders. It provides hope for hundreds of prisoners around the country, including more than 60 in Massachusetts, who until now saw no chance of ever walking free.
Massachusetts is one of 28 states affected by the court’s decision in not considering mitigating factors and special circumstances that might warrant parole eligibility. Belying the undeserved reputation for being soft on crime, the Commonwealth arguably has the nation’s stiffest sanction for juvenile murder. Anyone as young as 14 charged with murder is automatically tried as an adult, and if convicted of first-degree murder, receives a mandatory sentence of life without parole.
And:
For the growing network of legal experts and child advocates, the ruling is a partial victory, but falls short of the ultimate goal of bringing laws more in line with evolving standards around the world and developing science concerning adolescent brain development. In this struggle, change has come gradually.
Earlier coverage of Miller v. Alabama and juvenile sentencing begins in the preceding post.
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