The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that its 2012 decision
barring mandatory life in prison without parole for juveniles has retroactive
effect, reported the ABA Journal.
The court ruled 6-3 in the case of 69-year-old Henry
Montgomery, who was 17 when he killed a deputy sheriff. He has spent most of
his life in prison under a sentence of life without parole, imposed
automatically when jurors declined to sentence Montgomery to death.
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote the majority opinion (PDF)
for Montgomery v. Louisiana, joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.
and Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena
Kagan.
The Supreme Court said its 2012 decision Miller v.
Alabama is retroactive, and it binds state courts in collateral-review
proceedings. Miller found life sentences without parole for juveniles
convicted of murder constitute cruel and unusual punishment when a youth’s
individual characteristics are not allowed to be taken into account.
Kennedy said Miller announced a substantive rule
of constitutional law, rather than a procedural rule, which makes the holding
retroactive. “Miller’s conclusion that the sentence of life without parole is
disproportionate for the vast majority of juvenile offenders raises a grave
risk that many are being held in violation of the Constitution,” Kennedy wrote.
State are not required to relitigate sentences in each case
where juveniles received a mandatory sentence of life without parole, however.
“A state may remedy a Miller violation by permitting juvenile
homicide offenders to be considered for parole, rather than by resentencing
them,” Kennedy wrote.
“The opportunity for release will be afforded to those who
demonstrate the truth of Miller’s central intuition—that children who
commit even heinous crimes are capable of change,” Kennedy wrote.
The opinion said state collateral review courts, as well as
federal habeas courts, must give retroactive effect to Supreme Court decisions
that announce new substantive rules of constitutional law. “There is no
grandfather clause that permits states to enforce punishments the Constitution
forbids,” Kennedy wrote. “To conclude otherwise would undercut the Constitution’s
substantive guarantees.”
The ABA had
filed an amicus brief urging the court to make Miller retroactive.
Justice Antonin Scalia dissented, joined by Justices
Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. Scalia accuses the majority of relying
on irrelevant “dicta cherry picked” from cases, of using “sleight of hand,” and
of “acting in Godfather fashion.”
Scalia argued that retroactivity does not apply to
postconviction remedies in state courts. “This conscription into federal
service of state postconviction courts is nothing short of astonishing,” Scalia
wrote.
Scalia also disagreed with the majority’s conclusion that Miller announced
a substantive rule. The majority had “rewritten” and expanded Miller beyond
its original holding, Scalia argued.
Thomas also wrote a separate dissent.
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