SCOTUS - Life without parole for minors constitutional

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Juveniles convicted of murder can be sentenced to life in prison without parole without being found to be "permanently incorrigible" by a judge, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Thursday.

In a 6-3 decision in Jones v. Mississippi, the justices held that the Eighth Amendment does not require judges to find that a person convicted of a murder they committed before they were 18 is forever irredeemable before sentencing them to life without parole.

The petitioner, Brett Jones, who was given such a sentence after being convicted of murder for killing his grandfather when he was 15, had argued that the high court's rulings in two previous cases — Miller v. Alabama and Montgomery v. Louisiana — barred the judge in his case from condemning him to life in prison without first finding that he was "permanently incorrigible," a standard that comes from the Montgomery decision.

In Miller, the high court held in 2012 that under the Eighth Amendment, a defendant who commits murder when younger than 18 can only be sentenced to life without parole if the sentence isn't mandatory and the sentencing judge has discretion not to impose it. In Montgomery, decided in 2016, the justices said that the Miller ruling applied retroactively in cases being reviewed outside the direct appeals process and that Miller barred life without parole except for "those whose crimes reflect permanent incorrigibility."

Under those rulings, a judge who imposes a life-without-parole sentence on a juvenile defendant must also make a separate factual finding that the defendant is irreparably corrupt, Jones contended in his petition for certiorari. The trial judge who sentenced Jones did not make such a finding.

But in its ruling Thursday, the high court's majority disagreed with that assessment.

"The problem for Jones is that Miller and Montgomery squarely rejected such a requirement," Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote for the majority, adding that "the court has already ruled that a separate factual finding of permanent incorrigibility is not required."

"In a case involving an individual who was under 18 when he or she committed a homicide, a state's discretionary sentencing system is both constitutionally necessary and constitutionally sufficient," according to the decision.

When Jones was convicted for killing his grandfather when he was 15 years old, Mississippi law called for a mandatory sentence of life without parole for murder. But after the Supreme Court held in Miller that such a sentence can only be imposed on a juvenile if it is not mandatory, the Mississippi Supreme Court ordered Jones to be resentenced.

The judge in Jones' case again ordered him to serve life without parole, and Jones appealed, citing the Miller and Montgomery decisions.

"Without a requirement to find permanent incorrigibility before imposing life without parole, the command of Miller and Montgomery to restrict the sentence to rare, permanently incorrigible juveniles loses its force as a rule of law," Jones said in his Supreme Court petition.

But "that is an incorrect interpretation of Miller and Montgomery," Justice Kavanaugh wrote for the majority, which also included Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett. Justice Clarence Thomas filed a concurring opinion.

Instead, Miller and Montgomery allow a judge to consider a defendant's youth as a mitigating circumstance and only impose a sentence of life without parole in cases where that sentence is appropriate, the opinion said.

"If the Miller or Montgomery court wanted to require sentencers to also make a factual finding of permanent incorrigibility, the court easily could have said so — and surely would have said so," according to the majority. "But the court did not say that, or anything like it."

States can impose sentencing limits for juvenile defendants who are convicted of murder, including prohibiting them from receiving life without parole or requiring judges to make extra factual findings before sentencing them to life without parole, Justice Kavanaugh added.

"But the U. S. Constitution, as this court's precedents have interpreted it, does not demand those particular policy approaches," he wrote.