On this date, January
25, 2016, the United States Supreme Court held that its previous ruling in Miller v. Alabama, 567 U.S. ___ (2012), that a mandatory life sentence without parole should
not apply to juveniles convicted of murder, should be applied
retroactively. This decision potentially affects up to 2,300 cases nationwide.
This case is one in a series since 2005 that have mitigated the harshness of
sentencing of juveniles. How would you feel if your family member was murdered
by a juvenile offender and at least, 15 or 20 years later, he was released to
go free and kill again? Say ‘Thank You’ to the ACLU who are so happy for it. Yamaji
Yukio, Rogelio
Cannady, Abdullah
T. Hameen and Lee
Andrew Taylor were several perfect examples of juvenile killers who
murdered again when they were released or killed behind bars, now they were all
executed and will never murder again. I will post information from Wikipedia
and some other news sources about ending LWOP for juveniles in the United
States.
Montgomery
v. Louisiana
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Argued October 13,
2015
Decided January 25, 2016 |
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Full case name
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Henry Montgomery, Petitioner v. Louisiana
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Docket nos.
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Citations
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Prior history
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motion to correct and illegal sentence
denied, Miller held to be not retroactive
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Holding
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Miller's prohibition on life in prison without the
possibility of parole for juvenile homicide
offenders is a substantive rule that must be applied retroactively.
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Court membership
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Case opinions
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Majority
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Kennedy, joined by Roberts, Ginsburg, Breyer,
Sotomayor, Kagan
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Dissent
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Scalia, joined by Thomas, Alito
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Dissent
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Thomas
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Laws applied
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Montgomery v. Louisiana, 577 U.S. ___ (2016), was a United States Supreme Court case
in which the Court held that its previous ruling in Miller v. Alabama, 567 U.S. ___ (2012), that a mandatory life sentence without parole should
not apply to juveniles convicted of murder, should be applied
retroactively. This decision potentially affects up to 2,300 cases nationwide.
This case is one in a series since 2005 that have mitigated the harshness of
sentencing of juveniles.
Background
Issue
In
2005, the US Supreme court established in Roper
v. Simmons that the death penalty for children under 18 was
unconstitutional. In 2010, in Graham
v. Florida, a life sentence without parole was ruled unconstitutional
for non-murder crimes. Two years later, in Miller
v. Alabama (2012), the Court decided that mandatory life sentence without parole should
not apply to juveniles.
Petitioner
The
plaintiff, Henry Montgomery, committed a murder in 1963 when he was 17; as of
2015 he is 69. He has become a model member of the prison community, serving as
a coach on the prison boxing team, working in the prison’s silk-screen program,
and offering advice to younger inmates.
Opinion
of the Court
On
January 25, 2016, the Supreme Court voted 6–3 in favor of applying the ruling
retroactively. Persons previously given automatic life sentences with no chance
of parole as minors must now be re-sentenced or considered for parole. Justice Anthony
Kennedy wrote in the majority opinion that "prisoners like Montgomery
must be given the opportunity to show their crime did not reflect irreparable
corruption; and if it did not, their hope for some years of life outside prison
walls must be restored." Kennedy said the decision was founded on
substantive grounds, based "on the diminished culpability of all juvenile
offenders, who are, he said, immature, susceptible to peer pressure and capable
of change. Very few, he said, are incorrigible. But he added that as a general
matter the punishment was out of bounds."
Justices
Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas dissented. Scalia wrote in
the dissenting opinion that Kennedy had twisted the language in the Miller
decision to make it sound categorical when it merely required a new sentencing procedure.
Scalia also stated that it would be very difficult for judges and juries to
decide whether defendants were incorrigible decades after they were originally
sentenced. Thomas filed a second dissenting opinion, stating that the decision
"repudiates established principles of finality".
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