Congressional Digest

Supreme Court Debates October 2012 No. 7 Vol. 15
Opinion of the Court in Miller v. Alabama

Life Without Parole Revisited

Eighth Amendment Protection of Juvenile Murderers

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Opinion of the Court in Miller v. Alabama

Mandatory Life Without Parole for Minors Is Unconstitutional

The two 14-year-old offenders in these cases were convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. In neither case did the sentencing authority have any discretion to impose a different punishment. State law mandated that each juvenile die in prison even if a judge or jury would have thought that his youth and its attendant characteristics, along with the nature of his crime, made a lesser sentence (for example, life with the possibility of parole) more appropriate. Such a scheme prevents those meting out punishment from considering a juvenile’s “lessened culpability” and greater “capacity for…

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