This week the U.S. Supreme Court scored a victory for reform in the criminal justice system. In Miller v. Alabama, the high court struck down mandatory life sentences without parole for juveniles under 18 convicted of homicide, finding them to be an Eighth Amendment violation.
The Eighth Amendment guarantees that individuals have a right to not have excessive sanctions against them. The punishment must fit the crime and fit the offender, and is based on “evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.”
This 5-4 decision is hopeful because it reaffirms the idea of rehabilitation; that although people must pay for crimes they commit, there is a chance at redemption. The case is important for children — who are not fully developed and not as culpable as adults — and in particular African-American and Latino children who more likely get caught up in the prison system, the world’s largest.
Miller involves two 14-year old boys convicted of murder—one in Alabama, the other in Arkansas. One of the youthful offenders was in and out of foster homes, and suffered from child abuse and addiction. The decision comes in the spirit of Roper v. Simmons, which found the death penalty for juveniles to violate the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. Graham v. Florida and Sullivan v. Florida also struck down juvenile life without parole for offenses other than murder.
In the court’s opinion, Justice Elena Kagan, an Obama appointee, noted that there are fundamental differences between the mind of an adult and the mind of a child, and that only a small percentage of adolescents who engage in illegal activity become long-term problems. Life without parole does not allow for rehabilitation, suggesting that children are unable to change, and will always pose a danger to society. Such a punishment, she concluded, amounts to a death sentence.
“Such mandatory penalties, by their nature, preclude a sentencer from taking account of an offender’s age and the wealth of characteristics and circumstances attendant to it,” Justice Kagan wrote.
“Under these schemes, every juvenile will receive the same sentence as every other—the 17-year-old and the 14-year-old, the shooter and the accomplice, the child from a stable household and the child from a chaotic and abusive one,” she said. “And still worse, each juvenile (including these two 14-year-olds) will receive the same sentence as the vast majority of adults committing similar homicide offenses — but really, as Graham noted, a greater sentence than those adults will serve,” Kagan added.
“Determining the appropriate sentence for a teenager convicted of murder presents grave and challenging questions of morality and social policy. Our role, however, is to apply the law, not to answer such questions,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in his dissent.
“The legislatures of Arkansas and Alabama, like those of other jurisdictions… have determined that all offenders convicted of specified homicide offenses, whether juveniles or not, deserve a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. Nothing in our Constitution authorizes this Court to supplant that choice,” wrote Justice Clarence Thomas, siding with the conservative wing of the court.
“Today’s decision invalidates a constitutionally permissible sentencing system based on nothing more than the Court’s belief that “its own sense of morality . . . pre-empts that of the people and their representatives,” Thomas added.
However, the decision still allows for life sentences without the possibility of parole for juveniles, meaning they will never again see the light of day. Amnesty International notes that America is the only nation that allows the practice to continue. The only one, which says a great deal about a country that calls itself the land of the free. And there are 2,500 people in the U.S. serving life for crimes they committed as children.
“The disconnect between the U.S. and the rest of the world with respect to the sentencing of youth remains wide and deep,” said Marsha Levick, Deputy Director and Chief Legal Counsel at the Juvenile Law Center, a Philadelphia-based nonprofit law office dealing with children’s rights. “The battle to eliminate juvenile life without parole sentences will continue, not just in the courts but in the legislatures as well. Children must have the opportunity to demonstrate maturity and growth even in prison; principles of fundamental fairness and the belief in human dignity demands no less.”
This time around, the Supreme Court has decided to side with human rights and the notion of second chances. In the largest prison nation in the world — with over 2.5 million people locked up, behind bars, and disproportionately poor, uneducated, black and brown — we often lock ‘em up and throw away the key.
And society believes it can throw away all of its problems in the process. A cradle-to-prison pipeline thrives on failing, crumbling urban schools, which are merely feeder schools for the penitentiary. More bodies in jail for longer sentences help enrich the careers of politicians and prosecutors, and fill the coffers of the corporations that profit from the incarceration.
But with Miller, America’s highest court has suggested that young people are salvageable. And in the process, the court provides hope that it is salvageable as well.
Follow David A. Love on Twitter at @davidalove