Fewer juveniles are being sentenced to mandatory life imprisonment without parole, in the wake of a U.S. Supreme Court decision, a recent study concludes.
Nine states abolished life without parole for juveniles after the court’s 2012 Miller v. Alabama decision, according to a study by the Phillips Black Project. Fifteen states now take that position.
“California and Florida have sharply limited its use and other states have eliminated its use for certain categories of crimes,” reported Tony Mauro in an Oct. 12 story for The National Law Journal.
The Phillips Black Project is a public interest law firm that advocates ending sentencing juveniles to life without parole. Mauro concludes the study may prove to be influential when current cases are decided to “ban all juvenile sentences of life without parole.”
The Miller case ruled mandatory life without parole for juveniles violated “the Eight Amendment’s prohibition of ‘cruel and unusual punishment.’” However, the court did not rule it unconstitutional if the sentence is optional. That is left to the discretion of the judge in each case.
The U.S. Supreme Court must now address this optional question as it considers two recent cases, Montgomery v. Louisiana and Jacobs v. Louisiana.
Most of the sentences were handed down during the “moral panic” in the 1990s, Mauro wrote. These sentences peaked at more than 100 per year in the 1990s and dropped to fewer than 10 annually since 2013.