The U.S. Supreme Court will decide if mandatory life-without-parole sentences apply retroactively for juvenile offenders.
The court picked the case of Toca v. Louisiana to decide whether the defendant deserves a new sentencing hearing, the New York Times reported.
George Toca, 47, was 17 in 1984 when he was convicted of fatally shooting a friend in a botched armed robbery, the newspaper noted.
Toca’s appeal refers to the 2012 decision of Miller v. Alabama, where the high court ruled that mandatory life sentences for juvenile offenders violated the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
Justice Elena Kagan wrote the majority opinion, expressing that judges and juries must take account of the distinctive characteristics of youth.
Kagan wrote that “mandatory life without parole for a juvenile precludes consideration of his chronological age and its hallmark features – among them, immaturity, impetuosity and failure to appreciate risks and consequences.”
“It prevents taking into account the family and home environment that surrounds him – and from which he cannot usually extricate himself – no matter how brutal or dysfunctional,” the decision said.
Life without parole sentences remain permissible, but only after individualized consideration, the court decided.
Toca is claiming the Miller decision entitles him to a new sentencing hearing. The Louisiana Supreme Court said “no.”
The Louisiana court explained in a different case with the same situation, retroactivity was not required because the Miller decision “merely sets forth a new rule of criminal constitutional procedure,” stated the article.
Toca’s lawyers urged the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case because the Supreme Courts of Illinois, Iowa, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Hampshire and Texas have ruled in favor of retroactivity; Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota and Pennsylvania have rejected retroactivity.
The district attorney for the Orleans Parish, Leon A. Cannizzaro Jr., is quoted as saying there are practical reasons to reject retroactivity. The inquiry called for by the Miller decision was too difficult to accomplish decades after the fact, Cannizzaro said.
The district attorney wrote, “Absent a psychological exam conducted prior to his conviction that specifically addressed Toca’s ‘youth and attendant characteristics,’ evidence as to Toca’s ‘diminished culpability and heightened capacity for change’ and ‘greater prospects for reform’ at the time of his conviction some 30 years ago on April 16, 1985, is likely nonexistent.”
As juvenile lifers wait for the Toca decision, there are other decisions that have been decided concerning harsh penalties for youth offenders. In its 2005 Roper v. Simmons ruling, the high court eliminated the juvenile death penalty.
In Graham v. Florida, the court ruled in 2010 that sentencing juvenile offenders to life without the possibility of parole was also unconstitutional, but only for crimes that did not involve killings.
