SCOTUS remands juvenile sentencing cases; dissenters say judges already considered incorrigibility
Two justices dissented on Monday when the U.S. Supreme Court returned five cases to Arizona state courts to reconsider in light of Supreme Court precedent on juvenile sentencing.
The Supreme Court vacated the Arizona judgments and remanded them for consideration based on Montgomery v. Arizona, which held that a 2012 Supreme Court decision barring mandatory life in prison without parole for juveniles has retroactive effect. The 2012 decision was Miller v. Alabama. SCOTUSblog has a story.
The defendants were all convicted of committing murders before the age of 18 and sentenced to life without parole, according to the dissent in one of the cases by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., joined by Justice Clarence Thomas. The case was Tatum v. Arizona.
Alito said all of the cases were decided after Miller v. Alabama, and all assumed that Miller applied to the sentence. “A sentence of life without parole was imposed in each of these cases,” Alito wrote, “not because Arizona law dictated such a sentence, but because a court, after taking the defendant’s youth into account, found that life without parole was appropriate in light of the nature of the offense and the offender.”
Though Miller found that life without parole is excessive for all but “the rare juvenile offender whose crime reflects irreparable corruption,” Alito said, “the record in the cases at issue provides ample support for the conclusion that these ‘children’ fall into that category.”
Justice Sonia Sotomayor concurred in the remand decision. She said the sentencing judges had not specifically addressed the question of whether the juveniles’ crimes reflected “permanent incorrigibility” and whether the juveniles were among the rare offenders who exhibit “such irretrievable depravity that rehabilitation is impossible and life without parole is justified.”
Hat tip to How Appealing.
