Category: Sentencing

In Jones v. Mississippi, decided April 22, the U.S. Supreme Court held that in cases where a juvenile is facing life without parole (LWOP) for murder, all that is needed to comply with its 2012 precedent in Miller v. Alabama is for the sentencing court to have discretion to choose a lower sentence and consider the defendant’s youth in making the choice.

That would have been fairly straightforward based on Miller itself. The complications arose from the 2016 decision in Montgomery v. Louisiana, making Miller retroactive so as to require resentencing for a 1963 murder. The problem, as explained at length in the previous post, is that Montgomery contradicted Miller in order to achieve that result, and Montgomery even contradicted itself, making statements that cannot be reconciled.

In Jones, the majority opinion joined by five Justices and the dissent joined by three have many sharp points of disagreement, but they agree on one thing. Both maintain the fiction that Montgomery is consistent with Miller. As a result, neither opinion’s analysis can possibly be completely correct, and neither is. Continue reading . . .

Last week the U.S. Supreme Court decided the case of Jones v. Mississippi, regarding the constitutional requirements to sentence an under-18 murderer to life in prison without parole (LWOP). The majority opinion claims to “carefully follow[] both Miller [v. Alabama] and Montgomery [v. Louisiana].” The dissent claims “the Court guts” both decisions. Neither statement is completely right. Neither could be, given that Montgomery contradicts both Miller and itself.

About all that is left of Montgomery is its bare holding that Miller is retroactive. That holding will soon be essentially moot, as nearly all the murderers who killed before their 18th birthday who qualify for reconsideration under Miller will either have had a new decision in their cases (see footnote 6 of Jones, last sentence) or have lost their right to seek it by delay. The holding stands like the chimney of a house that burned down, useless but still standing.

There is a certain poetic justice in Montgomery being largely relegated to the dustbin in a less-than-honest decision, as Montgomery itself is among the most dishonest decisions in recent Supreme Court history. Continue reading . . .

Not a lot of media coverage of the Jones v. Mississippi decision. A lot of other events were happening yesterday. Jessica Gresko has this story for Associated Press:

In a statement, Kymberlee Stapleton of the California-based Criminal Justice Legal Foundation called the decision a “victory for the families of victims murdered by juveniles.”

Continue reading . . .

Today the U.S. Supreme Court decided Jones v. Mississippi, No. 18-1259, a case of teenager who murdered his grandfather. The high court pruned back expansive language in its 2016 decision in Montgomery v. Louisiana. The decision confirms that the 2012 case of Miller v. Alabama requires only that the sentencer have discretion to choose between life without parole and a lesser sentence in the case of a juvenile murderer. There is no requirement imposed by the federal constitution that the judge find that the juvenile is “permanently incorrigible,” a finding that cannot be made with any degree of reliability. Continue reading . . .