Chapter One: Introduction and Purpose of Thesis

Adolescence is a period of life which many remember as a vulnerable time of their lives. People may make questionable and reckless decisions that they would never repeat as they mature and become adults. Young people often experience mental health issues,¹ but there are not adequate societal structures in place to manage one of the most at-risk groups of youth. The lack of support has severe consequences for juveniles in the criminal justice system who can be harmed by current sentencing practices.

Consider a hypothetical teenage boy, James. James has not grown up with an affluent upbringing. Where he lives, extra-curricular school programs are underfunded and he is likely to spend time in the company of his peers smoking² and drinking,³ as millions of teens do every year. . In his city, 1 in every 119 people will be a victim of violent crime, and 1 in 25 people will be victims of a property crime.⁴ In addition, James and his friends consume media on television and in video games that cause him to believe that carrying a gun with him wherever he goes is the only way to keep himself safe. He is invited by a friend to drive around with a man both older than and unfamiliar to James, to smoke marijuana. Under the influence of these drugs, a heated argument breaks out in that confined space. When the stranger in the driver’s seat that James just met reaches down for something, James’ friend shouts that he has a gun and demands that James use his own weapon to shoot. Faced with what he thinks is a life-or-death situation, James draws his weapon, and shoots and kills the driver. When he is arrested, the state determines that for his crime, he must be tried as an adult and thus subject to the same penalties if he is found guilty. The jury, however, does not believe his story. He is found guilty and through chance and chance alone, James was born in one of the 23 states that still permits juveniles to be sentenced to a sentence of life without parole for the crime of homicide, including those murders like James’ that weren’t premeditated. He is sentenced to life without parole and spends the remainder of his life in prison for a crime he committed as a legal child.

Though James’ is not real and never endured a life behind bars for this crime, his story is loosely based on the true story of a Tennessee teenager who almost faced the same fate and whose story and court triumph will be discussed later in this thesis. Yet, the first important thing to note is that James’ story could happen to any teenager in America still residing in states where lengthy juvenile sentencing remains acceptable practice in the criminal justice system. The United States Constitution promises protection for every citizen against “cruel and unusual punishment.”⁵ Yet when an adolescent’s mind has yet to finish maturing, sentencing them to juvenile life without parole raises profound legal questions. Some argue that juvenile life without parole is indeed cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment. Although the United States Supreme Court has not taken this position, it is noteworthy that some state courts and legislatures have recently begun to revisit the question of juvenile life without parole.

The Definition of Juvenile Life Without Parole and Its Role in the U.S. Juvenile Justice System

Juvenile life without parole, often referred to in scholarly works as JLWOP, is a sentencing scheme that 1) requires a sentence of life rather than a term of years, and 2) the person sentenced to be under eighteen years of age,⁶ the age at which a person is considered a legal adult in the United States. Juveniles are subject to life without parole sentences when they undergo the process of transfer, a mechanism in the American criminal justice system that allows for a child who commits serious and violent offenses to be moved from juvenile court to the adult criminal justice system for their prosecution.⁷ Many prosecutors and prosecutorial agencies support the transfer of some juveniles to adult court is because they believe the process serves as a specific and general deterrent that will dissuade the defendant and the general population of youth from reoffending or committing severe crimes.⁸ Nevertheless, some research studies have determined that juvenile transfer is actually associated with slightly higher rates of recidivism amongst the population of those juveniles prosecuted through the adult court system.⁹ By 2010, juvenile life without parole sentences could only be given to those juveniles found guilty of homicide offenses.¹⁰

Children sentenced to JLWOP are in fact sentenced to die in prison for crimes they committed in their youth. While the Supreme court banned automatic life without parole sentences for juveniles sentenced as adults, for the same and similar violent crimes, youth in the United States who are transferred to adult court may face a different situation. These juveniles may be sentenced to lengthy automatic life with parole sentences and de facto life sentences of fifty years or longer for crimes that they committed when they were under the age of 18. Many argue that these sentences are functional equivalents of life sentences for juvenile offenders. Studies have shown that incarceration severely shortens life expectancy, with some estimates arguing that for every year of prison, two years are shaved off of an inmates’ life expectancy compared to the national average.¹¹ A negative linear relationship between life expectancy and prison time was also found in a 2013 study with data taken from New York State parole administrative databases spanning the years 1989 to 2003. Researcher, Dr. Evelyn Patterson found that five years in prison increased the odds of death by 78% and took ten years off of their expected life span at the age of thirty.¹² Both of these examples indicate the bleak prognosis for youth incarcerated for decades. Notably, the study also indicates that sentences of forty, fifty, and sixty years are considered by some to be the functional equivalent of life sentences for these juveniles because they spend the majority of their years in prison. Consequently, their chances of dying in prison is a more certain reality.

It is important to mention that of 197 countries, the United States is the only country in the entire world that sentences its children to life without parole.¹³ In fact, sentencing children to die in prison is condemned by international law. Article 37(a) of the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of the Child, an international human rights treaty setting out the civil, social, economic, political, health and cultural rights of children states that, “No child shall be subjected to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. Neither capital punishment nor life imprisonment without possibility of release shall be imposed for offences committed by persons below eighteen years of age”¹⁴ functionally outlawing the practice as a matter of international law. The United States, a member state of the United Nations signed onto the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child,¹⁵ yet every year in the United States, juveniles as young as the age of thirteen are subject to JLWOP sentences for their crimes.¹⁶

Today, only twenty-eight states have banned the sentencing practice of life without parole for juvenile offenders.¹⁷ Of the remaining twenty two states, the majority are concentrated in the southeastern United States, yet the state that houses the highest number of youths serving JLWOP sentences is Michigan.¹⁸ An additional five states, New York, Rhode Island, Maine, Missouri, and Montana, have yet to ban the practice, but have no incarcerated individuals residing in the state and serving this sentence (See Fig. 1). Nevertheless, according to the Sentencing Project, a prominent activism organization that advocates for decarceration and fair sentencing, according to 2020 data, 1,465 incarcerated individuals across America are serving JLWOP sentences.¹⁹ So long as life without parole exists as a sentencing option for children, this number only has the potential to increase.

The Important Differences Between Adult and Juvenile Brains

That “young and dumb” reputation, popularized in media and anecdotes exists for a very scientific reason that undermines the rationale for the practice of juvenile life without parole. While juveniles are certainly not dumb, they lack fully developed reasoning and processing skills, and practitioners and scientists largely agree that the juvenile mind processes things differently than an adult’s mind would in several key aspects. These professionals that these important differences should make a juveniles less legally culpable for their actions than adult offenders. The consensus among neuropsychiatrists today is that the adolescent brain lacks a fully developed sense of impulse inhibition until the age of twenty-five.²⁰ This is well above the age of thirteen,²¹ the earliest that a juvenile can be deemed old enough to serve a life sentence without parole for their actions, actions which were likely influenced by an underdeveloped perception of impulse control and consequences.²² This is because teenagers’ prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that prompts logic and reason in decision making, is less developed than it is in adults. Instead, in situations of high pressure, they rely on the limbic system, a group of systems in the cerebrum of the brain that command the intensity of emotions including fear, anger, and the fight or fight response. As a result, teens are more susceptible to quickly become angry, experience intense mood swings, and make decisions based on “gut” feelings that can all influence the elements of a crime when it is committed.²³

To prove guilt in criminal justice proceedings, two foundational elements must be established to demonstrate culpability, the actus reus, the guilty act, and mens rea the guilty mind. Mens rea requires that the defendant knowingly and intentionally, to a rational mind, committed a criminal act. Yet, given that juveniles’ brains are not yet fully developed, fundamentally lack a proper impulse inhibition, and subconsciously rely on the limbic system that triggers actions on “gut” feelings, under these legal definitions their ability to have the same mens rea as adult offenders is substantially reduced. Therefore, a widely accepted defense against the attempt to prove mens rea, is that juveniles possess what is known as diminished capacity. Diminished capacity is defined by the Legal Information Institute at Cornell University as the “theory that a person due to unique factors could not meet the mental state required for a specific intent crime”²⁴ under which would fall the crime of homicide, the only crime for which a child can receive the sentence of life without parole for.

In fact, the findings of many psychological studies have implied that changes in the brain’s function that allow for future rational decision making rely markedly on maturation alone.²⁵ This implies that it is simply a matter of a few years’ time for many juvenile offenders to develop the decision-making abilities that could alter entirely their behaviors in the kinds of situations that led to their imprisonments of life without parole. It is for this reason why many psychologists, activists, and legal professionals believe in a child’s increased capacity for change and rehabilitation compared to that of a similarly situated adult offender. Additionally, that would make sentences like JLWOP both inhumane and unnecessary for them. Life without parole sentences exist to incapacitate those that the criminal justice system believes to be a permanent threat to society, and opportunity for parole is revoked due to belief by a judge or jury that the defendant is permanently incorrigible. However, the concept of permanent incorrigibility for youth directly contradicts the previously mentioned scientific evidence and is widely disputed due to the intersection of neuropsychological study of brain development and population studies on incarcerated juveniles.

What is most commonly referred to as the age-crime curve (See Fig. 2) can be found consistently across incarcerated populations across the nation and in Western populations as a whole.²⁶ These curves demonstrate that offending amongst juvenile populations tends to increase from early childhood, peaks between the ages of fifteen and nineteen, and decrease in their early twenties.²⁷ By the age of twenty five, rates are often at about half of what they were at the peak of the curve.²⁸ According to research conducted by criminologists Jeffrey T. Ulmer and Darrel Steffensmeir of Pennsylvania State University, this age-crime curve trend occurs for two primary reasons. Firstly, twenty-five is widely agreed upon to be the age at which the brain stops developing, and changes in the prefrontal cortex that affect risk-taking, impulse control, emotional maturity, and rational decision-making fully form these elements in the adult mind.²⁹ Secondly, natural life-course events such as employment, increases in income, marriage, and children become increasingly pertinent to the mind with age. Events such as these make the potential consequences of committing a crime far more riskier and unappealing, and can act as a age-related deterrent to criminal activity in the mid-twenties.³⁰ These factors contribute to a natural drop in likelihood to reoffend, and given that the brain of a teenager who has been incarcerated in their youth has yet to finish developing, they retain malleability for reform during their time in prison. Thus, the idea that a child is “permanently incorrigible,” when they retain a capacity for change and decreased likelihood for re-offense if they commit a crime during their child due to natural biological changes is largely unfounded. Critics argue that to have this idea reinforced by the pervasiveness of juvenile life without parole sentences in the United States is to directly defy what science has found to be true of youth and their capabilities for reform.

The History of Juvenile Justice Policy and Life Without Parole in the U.S.

The state of criminology’s views on the brains of juvenile delinquents, however, was not always so forward thinking and forgiving, and it informed many of the sentencing schemes juveniles are presently subject to, including juvenile life without parole. Prior to much of the recent research that informed present day knowledge on the deficiencies of the juvenile brains, many people characterized these children as a new, dangerous threat named by criminologists as “superpredators.” In 1995, criminologist and Princeton professor, John DiIulio gained national attention when he published an article coining the term “superpreadator” to describe a type of remorseless child criminal who would overrun the country and increase crime rates. Though this theory was purported when crime was at an all-time decade low,³¹ DiIuilo argued that by 2010, if criminal justice policy did not impose harsh penalties, the number of juveniles in custody would increase threefold. This theory was reinforced by criminologist, James Fox, who stated that “Unless we act today, we’re going to have a bloodbath when these kids grow up.”³²

The practice of sentencing juveniles to life without parole began in the “tough-on-crime” era of the 1970s, a time during which it was a priority of lawmakers to reduce rising crime rates.³³ However, between the 1970s and 1990s, the youth was often considered and accounted for in court by a defense of infancy, requiring the state to prove that a child is capable of forming mens rea and to overcome the presumption that a child lacks the mind to consider the wrongfulness or consequences of their criminal act.³⁴ Though this defense was not accepted in juvenile courts, it held great weight and value in the defense of children who were accused of committing violent crimes.³⁵ However, the statistically significant increase in media coverage and sensationalism of juvenile violent crime in the 1990s, which resulted in a rising level of fear among the public, caused the adoption of more punitive juvenile crime.³⁶ With the perception of this alleged looming threat, legislators advocated for a “tough on crime” approach in their campaigns and their lawmaking. Across the country, legislators passed new statutes that broadened the crimes for which a juvenile could be transferred to adult court, and thus, subjected more children to adult sentencing schemes such as juvenile life without parole.³⁷ Criminologists Fox and DiIuilo, founders of the theory, later admitted that the prediction of a juvenile superpredator epidemic turned out to be wrong. They now acknowledged that their suprepredator myth “contributed to the dismantling of transfer restrictions, the lowering of the minimum age for adult prosecution of children, placing thousands of children into an ill-suited and excessive punishment regime.”³⁸

Though the United States remains the only nation in the world to have retained the practice of sentencing juveniles to life without parole, limitations have been placed upon after reforms that occurred in the last two decades. Prior to 2005, children as young as twelve were subject to these adult sentencing protocols imposed on them out of fear driven by the super predator myth. As a result, children as young as sixteen years old could be sentenced to the death penalty. Yet between 2005 and 2012, the severity of punishment for juveniles would diminish from the possibility of the death penalty to juvenile life without parole exclusively for crimes of homicide. While this is still behind the standards and ethics of justice held by the rest of the world, the three Supreme Court cases that contributed to this progress are significant for the way they changed the American perspective on juvenile sentencing and for the way it has influenced state judicial action towards reform.

A Brief Overview of the Miller Trilogy Caselaw and Juvenile Life Without Parole

Perhaps the most significant series of juvenile justice cases affecting life without parole are Roper v. Simmons (2005), Graham v. Florida (2010), and Miller v. Alabama (2012). Together these cases are commonly known as The Miller Trilogy of cases, and they transformed the landscape of juvenile sentencing in the United States. All of these cases rely heavily on portions of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. The Eighth Amendment of the Constitution bars the government from imposing “cruel and unusual punishment” on a defendant.³⁹ The term “cruel and unusual” has evolved over the course of centuries of court cases and legal proceedings. Today it refers to punishment that is significantly harsher than punishments inflicted on similar crimes. In Solem v. Helm (1983) a 1983 Supreme Court case, this definition was expanded to encompass the disproportionality of a sentence for its crime.⁴⁰ The latter is especially pertinent in the Miller Trilogy of cases, as proportionality of sentence is a key factor in determining what is an acceptable punishment for youth who commit similar crimes to adults with fully-developed brains.

The Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution guarantees a right to “due process” of law, the right to every citizen to be afforded equal procedures of law before their “life, liberty and property” can be deprived.⁴¹ The Due Process Clause is also the guarantee protecting individuals from cruel and unusual punishment imposed by state governments through what is known as the incorporation doctrine, a mechanism that allows parts of the first ten amendments to the Constitution are made applicable to the state governments’ actions. Both of these constitutional amendments will be paramount to understanding the oral arguments and the Supreme Court’s decisions in the Roper, Graham, and Miller cases to be discussed further detail later in this thesis.

The first of these cases, decided in 2005, after seventeen-year-old Christopher Simmons was sentenced to death for the murder of Shirley Crook and battled his case in appeals for nearly ten years, Roper v. Simmons (2005) determined that the death penalty for minors was unconstitutional.⁴² The decision overturned a 1989 case Stanford v. Kentucky (1989) that relied on a finding that a majority of Americans did not consider the death penalty for minors to be “cruel and unusual.”⁴³ In Roper, however, The Supreme Court found the execution of minors to be unconstitutional,⁴⁴ a historic Supreme Court decision changing the standard of juvenile justice and justice in America and a whole. The Court’s decision in Roper v. Simmons would mark one of the first cases to consider, and most importantly question, the role of evolving standards of decency, society’s changing views informed by social and scientific factors, in it criminal jurisprudence. The lives of 72 death row inmates sentenced to their demise as minors, including defendant Christopher Simmons, were saved with the ruling of that Supreme Court decision.⁴⁵ The press and the legal community noted that the ruling advanced the civil rights of minors sentenced to death, spurring additional advocacy and research that would lay the foundation for the remainder of the Miller Trilogy cases to follow in that decade.⁴⁶

Roper’s impact on other juvenile sentencing schemes raised additional questions in the years following its ruling. In 2009, the case of Terrence Graham, convicted of armed home burglary and sentenced to life without parole by a Florida state court, came before the Supreme Court. It was the first case after the landmark ruling of Roper v. Simmons that reached the Supreme Court, and to apply the same Eighth Amendment arguments presented in Roper v. Simmons. Upon his appeal, Graham and his attorneys argued that the imposition of life without parole on a juvenile violated the Eighth Amendment.⁴⁷ The Supreme Court’s ruling for Graham in this case would be the first to significantly restrict the application of JLWOP sentences, and the first to apply Eighth Amendment principles to a sentence other than execution for juveniles that was left constitutional for adults. Once more, the Supreme Court’s decision in this case would rely on evolving standards of decency, with a renewed emphasis on and inclusion of scientific findings of the differences between adult and juvenile brains in the majority opinion of Justice Anthony Kennedy.⁴⁸

Miller v. Alabama (2012) would further build upon the progressive curtailing of harsh juvenile sentencing brought about by cases Roper and Graham. Argued and decided in 2012, Miller v. Alabama handled the case of Evan Miller and Colby Smith. Miller, at the age of fourteen, and Cole brutally murdered victim Cole Cannon by beating him with a baseball bat and lighting his trailer on fire. Miller was then transferred from his county’s juvenile court and processed through the criminal court to be tried and sentenced with the crimes of capital murder and arson, for which he was subject to a mandatory life without parole sentence triggered by the state of Alabama’s sentencing scheme which required those convicted of the crime of capital murder in the criminal court to a mandatory life sentence, regardless of their age.⁴⁹ Miller challenged the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals, which affirmed the lower court’s decision. The Supreme Court agreed to hear Miller’s case which posed the question of whether the mandatory imposition of a life without parole sentence on a juvenile violated the Eighth Amendment’s protections against cruel and unusual punishment. Notable for the way it built upon the foundations of legal reasoning in Roper v. Simmons and Graham v. Florida, the decision of the Supreme Court in Miller would expand protections for juveniles, barring mandatory life without parole sentences from being given to children.⁵⁰ Miller v. Alabama marked a new and noteworthy area or progress in challenging severe youth punishment in that it was the first case to scrutinize mandatory sentencing schemes for youth and the second landmark case to narrow the application of juvenile life without parole.

Over time, however, the composition of the Supreme Court changed from a court with a majority of justices who distinguished between juveniles and adults with respect to Fourth and Eighth Amendment claims to a more conservative court that did not. This conservative court will be shown to have vastly different ideas on the role of the Court in defining juvenile justice policy, the value of science and evolving standards of decency in deciding a case, and on adhering to the precedents set by Roper, Graham, and Miller. The justice who pioneered progress and authored all three Miller Trilogy opinions, Anthony Kennedy, retired from the Court in 2018,⁵¹ and three other justices had either retired or passed away by the year 2020, when the Supreme Court heard it’s fourth landmark JLWOP case, Jones v. Mississippi (2021).

In stark contrast with the Miller trilogy cases, the majority on the Supreme Court in Jones refrained from narrowing the application of JLWOP sentences. The case derived from the crime of appellant, Brett Jones who stabbed his grandfather to death at the age of fifteen.⁵² A clarification on Miller in a 2016 Supreme Court case stated that Miller only allows the imposition of JLWOP in the cases of “those whose crimes reflect permanent incorrigibility.”⁵³ After a dispute regarding whether the consideration of this factor in court proceedings would entitle Jones to parole, the Supreme Court heard Brett Jones’ case. Though it was completely within the power of the Supreme Court to take another step forward towards the abolition of a sentencing structure that has been condemned by the rest of the world in the fashion of their predecessors, the Supreme Court ruled against Brett Jones^.54 Furthermore, it ruled against even increasing the standard of protections offered to juvenile offenders to ensure that the sentence can be rarely used.

Thesis Purpose and Plan

This thesis intends to establish that while the Miller Trilogy was not without its flaws, it set forth a clear direction for the future of JLWOP in the United States. These cases also recognized the importance of scientific findings of adolescent brain development and the way they should factor into youth sentencing. The thesis will also argue that Jones v. Mississippi is a definite outlier for the Supreme Court, which has previously prioritized the safeguards for youth in sentencing, and that Jones represents a distinct deviation from the precedents the Supreme Court has historically held in high regard. Additionally, this thesis will argue that Jones v. Mississippi is the death of evolving standards of decency in Supreme Court Eighth Amendment cases, and is therefore a step back for a potential future of abolition for juvenile life without parole sentences. In order to provide a thorough understanding of why this is and where hope for abolition lies in the wake of a changing stance on JLWOP from the Supreme Court, this thesis will examine three things. Firstly, it will examine the oral arguments and conclusions of the Supreme Court in the Miller Trilogy of cases, the progress it spurred, and the way it would influence future federal and state juvenile life without parole policy through a mixture of original case analysis and academic literature review. To highlight the contrast in the Court’s legal reasoning, adherence to precedent, and value for evolving standards of decency such as scientific findings and social leanings between The Miller Trilogy and Jones v. Mississippi, this thesis will do the same for Jones. In pointing out the ways in which the federal Supreme Court has changed its jurisprudence, and examining the dangerous implications that accompany the conclusions 23 made by the Supreme Court in this case, the first primary argument of this thesis is that the United States is unlikely to see the abolition of JLWOP in the near future through federal judiciary action due to the ideological priorities of the Supreme court’s current members.

This is not to say there is no hope for reform. In fact, the second primary argument that this thesis will make is that in the wake of the Supreme Court’s recent inaction on the issue, initiatives by the states over the last decade indicate an increasing potential for abolition by the states well before JLWOP can be abolished or further restricted federally. This thesis will demonstrate that patterns in the more progressive spirit of the Miller Trilogy have continued to live on in the actions of state legislatures and courts, continue to rely on the precedents set by the Miller Trilogy to narrow and even abolish disproportionately lengthy sentencing for juveniles.

The analysis will rely upon case studies of two states that have changed their youth sentencing policies. Connecticut and Tennessee are chosen due to their position on opposite ends of the political spectrum. Connecticut is a liberal state whose approach to these policies is similar to that of the Supreme Court when deciding The Miller Trilogy. On the other hand, Tennessee’s policies are more like those favored by the conservative Court in Jones. Two cases and two bills across these two states will be analyzed and examined as a part of this case study research. Before the two senate bills were introduced in Connecticut, State v. Riley was a 2015 case in which the Connecticut Supreme Court was tasked with determining whether a life sentence without parole may be imposed on a juvenile homicide offender in the exercise of the sentencing authority’s discretion after Miller v. Alabama was decided. The eventual ruling of the case by the Connecticut Supreme Court’s majority provides valuable commentary on the ethical reasoning and legal direction many courts across the country were taking post-Miller, deciding that the state’s present interpretation of Miller was “unduly restrictive.”⁵⁵ A probe into the legislation that followed, Public Act No. 15-84, S.B. 952 will find further similarities with the approaches taken in the Miller Trilogy by the Supreme Court.

Though a number of states have yet to ban JLWOP sentences through legislative action such as Connecticut, other states have sought to reduce harsh juvenile life sentences and revive Miller Trilogy values post-Jones through court action. This approach is exemplified by the 2022 case of the State of Tennessee v. Tyshon Booker (2022). Despite the narrow interpretation of the 8th Amendment and discarding of Miller Trilogy values in the most recent Jones v. Mississippi (2021) case, the Tennessee Supreme Court relied on the broad construction and increasingly liberal arguments of the Miller Trilogy to decide on this case. The court acknowledged in their ruling that crucial Miller Trilogy principle that “youth matters in sentencing” and argued that extreme sentencing must be “imposed only in cases where that sentence is appropriate in light of the defendant’s age.”⁵⁶ Supported by polling research conducted by the Pew Research Trust and Data For Progress on opinions surrounding extreme sentencing for youth, the findings from these case studies will reveal that Americans across the with different political preference support less restrictive policies so that children will not spend their lives in prison for crimes they committed in their youth. This is a factor that both supports the driving forces behind the states’ sentencing reform and that indicates a potential for further sentencing reform in upcoming years.

Finally, this thesis will review policy suggestions and potential constitutional challenges that can be pursued to eliminate the practice of juvenile life without parole throughout America. Drawing on a range of academic sources, suggestions for possible mitigation efforts and constitutional challenges against life sentences for juveniles are explored. Additional research from various national organizations and social scientists on interactions between evidence-based policymaking and public opinion will be used to build upon these suggestions to create potentially viable policy solutions.

The nation’s history and the federal government’s adherence to continuing JLWOP demonstrates an overall lack of belief in its youth, and of the rehabilitative capabilities of a justice system that is not entirely retributive. However, this thesis will also shed light on the changing tides of thought in America away from the lengthy detention of juveniles, towards reform. In addition, the thesis will argue that the likelihood for total abolition JLWOP lies in the actions of the states, and it will provide recommendations and constitutional challenges to this sentence and others like it for those lawmakers and legal professionals whom juveniles facing disproportionate sentencing rely upon.

Chapter Two: From Atkins to the Miller Trilogy

In the United States, the function of the Supreme Court through its power of judicial review is not only to interpret and uphold the Constitution but to do so in a way that ensures the promise of equal justice for all under the law. In an early and consequential case, the Supreme Court recognized its power of judicial review in 1803 in Marbury v. Madison.⁵⁷ The ruling upheld the Court’s power to declare laws in violation of the Constitution. Over time, the Court would declare laws unconstitutional in the area of criminal. Notably, the Bill of Rights provides guarantees for defendants against any state action that may violate their rights to fair trials and sentencing. Amendments Five through Eight of the U.S. Constitution all provide protections for criminals, including those sentenced and incarcerated under the age of eighteen. Only recently has the Court applied some of these constitutional protections to questions pertaining to juvenile justice.

In the tradition of the Supreme Court’s practice of abiding by stare decisis, the cases of the Miller Trilogy set a clear and predictable progression in juvenile sentencing, with each case building upon the legal reasoning laid of prior cases, and narrowing the extent to which minors could be subject to extreme punishment. Contemporary legal scholars John R. Mills and his coauthors agree that the Miller Trilogy marked transformational changes in the criminal justice system but also in Eighth Amendment legal theory and application.⁵⁸ As this chapter will explain, both the oral arguments and rulings of the Miller Trilogy signified the important way in which social science inherently can inform our understanding of the meaning of cruel and unusual punishment as applied to juveniles. This line of case law was interrupted when the Court decided Jones v. Mississippi, a case that adopted more punitive standards for juvenile punishment.⁵⁹

Aktins, Diminished Capacity and Evolving Standards of Decency

It is important to understand the reasoning provided by the affirming and dissenting judges in the Miller Trilogy and the consequences for the subsequent Eighth Amendment cases. As previously stated, relying upon and abiding by the precedent set by similar and applicable cases that had previously come before the court is common practice by courts and fundamental to maintaining the tradition of stare decisis that guides judges in their decision making. An earlier case of the most significance for the Miller Trilogy and excessive juvenile punishment was Atkins v. Virginia (2002).⁶⁰

In 1996 petitioner Daryl Renard Atkins was convicted of armed robbery, abduction and capital murder. For his crimes, he was arrested and brought to trial, and he underwent a psychological evaluation that revealed Atkins suffered from mental disability. Despite these findings being brought to light during the trial by the expert defense witness who conducted the evaluation, the jury found Atkins guilty and sentenced him to death. Even after this information of Atkins’ diminished mental capacities was presented to the jury in a second sentencing hearing, they again sentenced him to death.⁶¹

In 2002, the United States Supreme Court granted a writ of certiorari to Daryl Atkins, agreeing to hear his legal challenge that sentencing the mentally disabled to death was unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment’s cruel and unusual punishment clause. The court, in a 6-3 ruling authored by Justice Stevens, agreed with the case brought by Atkins,⁶² basing its reasoning on various grounds relevant to the discussions of Roper, Graham, and Miller. One of the primary reasons why the court made the determination to firstly, grant a writ of certiorari in this case is in part due to what Justice Stevens describes as a “dramatic shift in the state legislative landscape that has occurred in the past 13 years,”⁶³ namely that some states had outlawed the death penalty. This is particularly significant because it demonstrates the Supreme Court’s acknowledgement of evolving moral and legal standards in the states as a determining factor in the acceptance and decisions made in this case, something that can be seen throughout the Miller Trilogy of cases. This reference to state evolving standards is noticeably absent from Jones. The court did not limit this this application of the change in the states to their decision to grant cert, but in their decision to bar the application of the death penalty on mentally disabled individuals.

Stevens cited precedent from the previous Warren Court that set the tone for the Miller Trilogy’s approach to juvenile life without parole in a quote that states, “The basic concept underlying the Eighth Amendment is nothing less than the dignity of man . . . The Amendment must draw its meaning from the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society."⁶⁴ Other rationales presented in the Court’s opinion regarding the unconstitutional imposition of the death penalty for the mentally disabled include the concept of the proportionality of a sentence in relation to the then existing mental state of the defendant. Additionally, the majority in Atkins identified several principal aspects of the mentally disabled described by both modern child psychologists and the Court in the Miller Trilogy’s decisions. These include “significant limitations in adaptive skills such as communication, self-care, and self-direction;”⁶⁵ the tendency of these individuals to “often act on impulse rather than pursuant to a premeditated plan; and the likelihood that in group settings they are followers rather than leaders.”⁶⁶ The Supreme Court in Atkins would associate all of this with the concept of “diminished capacity,” the theory that due to the unique qualities of a mentally disabled person’s mental state, they cannot meet the mental state required for a specific intent crime. The origins of these concepts in Atkins are crucial to understanding their reappearance in the Miller Trilogy, specifically the standard they set for the court’s rulings on juvenile sentencing.

Miller Trilogy Oral Arguments

The oral arguments provided by the attorneys of the victorious parties in the Miller Trillogy, beginning with the case of Roper v. Simmons, play a vital role in the formation of a definition for “cruel and unusual punishment” for juveniles, and of a definition the “evolving standards of decency” so crucial to understanding the departure taken later by the Supreme Court in Jones v. Mississippi. Contained in the three oral arguments and rulings of Roper, Graham, Miller, and Jones, are three factors lending themselves proving evidence of cruel and unusual punishment and evolving standards of decency. The first is the comparison of foreign and domestic criminal justice, indicating that the United States is an outlier due to its extremely punitive youth sentencing. The second factor is the prevalence of the reasoning that the direction of domestic of policy changes, growing sentiment from the states embodied in judicial and legislative initiatives, indicate evolving standards of decency. Additionally, scientific findings drawn by many of these notable institutions and organizations are often made front and center in the determination of the cruelty of life without parole and the death penalty. The use of these scientific findings is the third factor across all three cases used to advocate against death and JLWOP sentences because the science supports the reduced culpability of youth and a theory of the disproportionality of lethal or life sentences. The combined trend of these three factors being prevalent across all three cases scientific, is particularly notable, however, for the way they would and continue to align with the circumstances surrounding juvenile life without parole in a post Jones world.

The successful arguments in the Miller Trilogy line of cases are rooted in the applicable parallels between the legal concepts put forward in Atkins in defense of mentally disabled criminals, and also the unique conditions of juveniles and the how the nation and world has responded to them in criminal justice policy. The case in which comparative criminal justice policy was relied upon most heavily was Roper v. Simmons, the case in which the respondent, convicted juvenile murderer Christopher challenged his death penalty sentence. One of the primary reasons provided to the Supreme Court in the oral arguments delivered by Christopher Simmons’ attorney was that nowhere else in the world was the death penalty legal for a minor.⁶⁷ Rebutting Justice Scalia’s questions of whether the United States should yield to the rest of the world, simply because it has abolished the death penalty for juveniles, the respondent’s attorney responded that there exists “a constitutional test that looks to evolving standards of moral decency that go to human dignity.”⁶⁸ The attorney emphasized the fact that the United States was the only remaining nation in the world to execute those who committed crimes as children, a significant fact that is relevant to the determination of the constitutionality of a criminal punishment. Though no other case after Roper relied heavily on comparative juvenile justice policy, at this moment in time, the circumstances of JLWOP sentences are consistent with arguments supporting the abolition of the death penalty for juveniles in Roper was argued.

A frequent strategy utilized by the attorneys in the Miller Trilogy and Jones oral arguments focused on the situating the evolving standards of decency in juvenile sentencing in trends of domestic law and policy change. In 2004, when the case of Roper v. Simmons was brought forth to the court, thirteen states had abolished the death penalty for all convicted criminals.⁶⁹ A 2004 Juveniles News and Developments article on the Death Penalty Information Center reported that 31 states had banned the practice of executing juveniles prior to the oral argument date in October,⁷⁰ and a further 14 states had laws requiring the minimum possible age of execution ne 18 years of age.⁷¹ The secondary argument provided in Roper that would reappear in future debate on disproportionate juvenile punishment highlighted state legislation as an indicium of evolving standards of decency. As the attorney for respondent Christopher Simmons made clear in his argument, no state which enacted age-specific amendments to their death penalty laws lowered the age, and no state that barred the death penalty for children, reinstated it.⁷² “The movement, addressed by the Court in Atkins, has all been in one direction,” the attorney stated. Pairing this trend with the precedence set in Atkins with scientific support, the respondent’s conclusion was that the combination of these factors created “scientific, empirical validation for requiring that the line (for the death penalty) be set at 18.”⁷³ In other words, there was both legislative action and institutional support that was informed by the concept of evolving standards of decency.

Four years later, in Graham v. Florida, following the precedent established in Roper, a very similar argument can be observed in the case presented by the petitioner. In 2009 at the time of oral argument, all but five states in America permitted juveniles to serve life without parole sentences,⁷⁴ which can be perceived as overwhelming support for the JLWOP sentence in all circumstances. The Roberts court affirmed this notion with their own on this trend, indicating an appreciation of the sentence from the states, “the fact that it has been allowed for so long and imposed so rarely, as the States themselves have admitted, is strong evidence of societal consensus.”⁷⁵ Nevertheless, Graham’s attorney acknowledged that states that primarily utilized the JWLOP sentencing only for the crime of homicide. The attorney for Graham took the point a step further and contended that it is instead evidence that this behavior from the states indicated the unusuality of the punishment, a necessary prong to prove that a sentence violated the protection from cruel and unusual punishment in the Eighth Amendment.⁷⁶

When attorney Bryan Stevenson brought fourteen-year-old Evan Miller’s case to the Supreme Court in 2012,⁷⁷ advocating for a ban on life without parole sentences for juveniles under the age of fourteen and mandatory life without parole sentences for juveniles, he too focused on evolving standards of decency based on the states’ policies. Before Miller was decided, 39 jurisdictions allowed the imposition of life without parole sentences on children,⁷⁸ During the oral argument, the Supreme Court’s conservative justices Antonin Scalia and Samuel Alito used this statistic in their questioning of the petitioner. Justice Scalia in particular noted that because the enactment of such a punishment on juveniles was still possible in so many jurisdictions in America it indicated the states’ standards of decency. He said, “the American people, you know, have decided that that's the rule. They allow it. And the Federal Government allows it.”⁷⁹ Though rebuffing this idea was no easy feat for Bryan Stevenson, he was still able to offer a point lending itself towards the standards of many states. Stevenson stated, “The States that have actually considered, discussed, and passed laws setting a minimum age for life without parole have all set that minimum age above 15. That's my primary argument. Thirteen States have done it; all of them except for one have set it at 18.”⁸⁰

Present across all oral arguments of the Miller trilogy and Jones was the integration of scientific evidence to compel the court to reduce the severity of punishments that youth were receiving such as the death penalty and JLWOP sentences. Roper v. Simmons was argued on the heels of much of the scientific evidence mentioned earlier in this thesis that identified the inherent qualities of reduced culpability and potential for rehabilitation that juveniles possess. Attorney Waxman, arguing for criminal defendant Christopher Simmons described these pieces of evidence as changing “the constitutional calculus for much the same reasons the Court found compelling in Atkins,”⁸¹ which were essential to the proper interpretation of the Constitution in regard to the sentencing of juveniles. In Roper, the scientific evidence was not as perhaps developed as it is today, but the attorney for Simmons was able to persuade the court of several things. Firstly, he was able to confirm that juveniles have diminished moral capability, based on the research of the time that, and he argued that “here adolescents -- are less morally capable. They are much, much less likely to be sufficiently mature to be among the worst of the worst.”⁸² This second sentence additionally implies that the possibility of becoming “the worst of the worst” happens after this maturity is obtained at adulthood, presently supported by science, a concept supported by adolescent psychology⁸³ In order to explain to the Court the factors that should inform a possible age-related spectrum of developmentally-driven culpability, Simmons’ attorney said, “every scientific and medical journal and study acknowledges that 16- and 17- year-olds are the heartland. No one excludes them. And what we know from the science essentially explains and validates the consensus that society has already developed.”⁸⁴ Notably, this argument underscores the evolving standards of decency, and it pushes the idea of immaturity to the legal definition of adulthood, which is in many states is still currently placed at 18 years of age. Additionally, this declaration that the ages of 16-17 are the “heartland” of adolescence also aligns with the trend of crimes peaking at that age range in the age-crime curve.⁸⁵ The age-crime curve, measuring the susceptibility towards criminal activity, reaches a peak around the age of 16 (See Fig. 2), consistent with both Christopher Simmons’ specific case and also the general youth population.⁸⁶

The attorney for Terrence Graham also made important references to scientific evidence in the oral arguments Graham v. Florida.⁸⁷ Though they did not feature as prominently, the science cited in the oral argument and opinions of Roper v. Simmons was used to support the petitioner’s argument in Graham, in the context of advocating for the ban of JLWOP sentences for those children who commit non-homicide crimes. The unconstitutionality of the penalty of life without parole for a child who has not committed a homicide was substantiated by attorney for the petitioner Bryan Gowdy, when he argued that the sentence is “cruel because of the inherent qualities of youth.”⁸⁸ The “inherent qualities of youth” included those defined by scientists in scholarly articles published at the time, such as one published in the Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, that identified the existence of deficits in rational decision-making abilities and impulse inhibition in juveniles aged 11-18.⁸⁹ Additionally, the attorney stated, “this sentence clearly falls on the line of being cruel because it tells an adolescent, for an adolescent mistake, you can never live in civil society.”⁹⁰ The identification of an “adolescent mistake” rather than a general mistake implies that it is a separate kind of mistake from the kind that can be made as an adult due to these scientific factors, and highlighting the uniqueness of the mistakes that juvenile defendants make. To conclude his argument, Attorney Gowdy provided an answer rooted in in response to judges’ questions about whether in cases of juvenile sentencing the Court should adopt a categorical approach or one that would process juveniles and determine their culpability on a case-by-case basis. He stated, “Based… on what scientists have told us, the categorical approach is the most logical approach because we can't tell which adolescents are going to change and which aren't,”⁹¹ given the nuances of the adolescent mind development across that specific population of individuals.

Much in the same way as Attorney Bryan Gowdy relied on science to display the cruelty and disproportionality of JLWOP sentences, Bryan Stevenson, attorney for petitioner Evan Miller also offered scientific evidence up to the Court to prove that mandatorily sentencing a fourteen-year-old to juvenile life without parole was “cruel and unusual punishment” under the Eight Amendment. Given the court’s reliance on these psychological findings in the previous two cases of the Miller Trilogy, Roper and Graham, he opened his argument by identifying the “internal attributes and external circumstances that preclude a finding of a degree of culpability.”⁹² Additionally, Attorney Stevenson laid these facts and the court’s recognition of them as a foundation for an argument which the court later accepted, namely, that the sentence of life without parole for juveniles may be cruel and unusual in certain circumstances, regardless of the manner of the crime. Of the Court’s decision he said,

these deficits in maturity and judgment and decision-making are not crime-specific. All children are encumbered with the same barriers that this Court has found to be constitutionally relevant before imposition of a sentence of life imprisonment without parole or the death penalty⁹³

Once again central to a Supreme Court JWLOP oral argument was the stance that to impose such a sentence would be stripping children of their chance to rehabilitate when the science suggests that this is not only a possibility for them to do so, but a likelihood. Evan Miller’s attorney argued, “even psychologists say that we can't make good long-term judgments about the rehabilitation and transitory character of these young people”⁹⁴ suggesting that the Court err on the side of caution and provide children with the benefit of the doubt in sentencing.

Across the Miller Trilogy, the combined trends of leveraging advancing scientific finding and forward legislative movement in these oral arguments are important. Those that the court were persuaded by would remain constitutionally significant for the definition of acceptable sentencing for youth. Aside from the strength they would garner from acceptance in the Supreme Court’s rulings, they would and continue to align with the circumstances surrounding JLWOP when Jones v. Mississippi was decided in 2021, and even in the present day.

Chapter Three: The Court’s Changing Jurisprudence from Miller to Jones

The Miller Trilogy Rulings

In agreeing with these specific points made by the attorneys during the oral arguments for the Miller Trilogy, the Supreme Court set forth legal precedent in each of their rulings in these cases, binding in future federal, state, and trial court cases, that became more accepting of scientific conclusions regarding the adolescent brain and appropriate juvenile sentencing standards. The conclusions in each of these cases shapes the acceptable punishments of youth convicts today, and the Miller Trilogy opinions laid out a blueprint for the interpretation of scientific evidence used by judges as they further defined cruel and unusual punishment for juvenile offenders. The discussion below will explore the noteworthy trends in the Supreme Court’s conclusions in the Miller Trilogy and their subsequent consequences for the law and youth sentencing practices.

Before the holdings and dicta of the rulings can be explored, it is necessary to examine the trends in the Court that decided them, namely, the makeup of those seated on it and their backgrounds. Five justices on the Supreme Court were present for the entirety of the Miller trilogy. Liberal-leaning Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Stephen Breyer, consistently joined the majority by agreeing or concurring with the majority. Conservative-leaning justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia always dissented, and the fifth justice, often considered centrist, was Anthony Kennedy. The rest of the justices would join in with their input on juvenile sentencing after the decision in Roper. It is notable that in the decade during which all three Miller Trilogy cases were decided, the Supreme Court was not more conservative than the general America public that it served. A ten-year longitudinal study conducted by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) studied the makeup of the court and the shifts in the court’s political alignment based on its most centrist judge over time. Their study reported that in 2010, during the time between the Graham and Miller decisions, “with Kennedy as the median [justice], the court’s rulings put it in an ideological middle ground roughly halfway between Republicans and Democrats.” In addition, “the estimated ideological position of the court with Kennedy as the median falls almost exactly at the position of the average American.”⁹⁵ Given the integral role played by societal norms and sentiments towards the interpretation of cruel and unusual punishment, the fact that the court’s political alignment was so similar to that of the public may have been a factor in their acceptance of these standards of decency offered to them by the scientific and legal communities advocating for diminished extreme sentencing for youth.

Of the Supreme Court’s majorities in these ruling there was one judge whose opinions and attitudes championed juvenile sentencing reform and cannot be overlooked in this analysis. Authoring the landmark cases of Roper and Graham, the first two out of the three Miller Trilogy opinions, the presence of Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court was central to the understanding of permissible juvenile sentencing and the establishment of the importance of “evolving standards of decency” to the understanding of the Eighth Amendment. During a time that many legal scholars would argue the political spectrum of the Supreme Court justices was far more prone to ebb and flow across their decisions in cases with different political impacts,⁹⁶ Justice Kennedy was appointed to the Supreme Court by Republican conservative President Ronald Reagan in an effort to “to appoint only those opposed to... the 'judicial activism' of the Warren and Burger Courts,"⁹⁷ whose decisions were regarded by conservatives as too progressive. Given this public promise, there is reason to believe Justice Kennedy was appointed out of belief that he would abide by these intentions when replacing the original nominee Robert Bork. In spite of this, Justice Kennedy’s opinions on the landmark Miller Trilogy demonstrated a considerable act of judicial activism, and a willingness to move outside of the boundaries of one’s political affiliation following his neutral interpretation of the Eighth Amendment, and its implication for juvenile sentencing schemes. Legal scholars who have analyzed his work, identify trends in his decisions, namely that “when Justice Kennedy was assigned to write a majority opinion, he wrote more often on the side of criminal defendants than for the government.”⁹⁸ The presence of a figure with such a record on the Supreme Court during the processing of juvenile criminal cases notably left a more progressive impact on sentencing, as he was a consistently a staunch advocate for the rights of youth defendants.

The first of Justice Anthony Kennedy’s opinions was authored in the case of Roper v. Simmons and affirmed many arguments by Christopher Simmons’ lawyer (discussed previously in this chapter) during oral argument. These include the weight of international and state policies as indicia of evolving standards of decency as well as the importance of scientific evidence when structuring acceptable and constitutional juvenile sentencing standards. In response to the first point offered by Christopher Simmons’ attorney, the Supreme Court’s majority in Roper placed considerable value on the arguments calling for America’s international isolation in juvenile sentencing protocols to be a driving factor in determining the unconstitutionality of the death penalty for children. In his majority opinion, Justice Kennedy wrote, “Our determination that the death penalty is disproportionate punishment for offenders under 18 finds confirmation in the stark reality that the United States is the only country in the world that continues to give official sanction to the juvenile death penalty,”⁹⁹ not only acknowledging America’s outlier status, but also affirming that this type of evidence offered in support of juvenile sentencing reform is both acceptable and constitutionally significant. In fact, evidence of a tradition of affirming this type of evidence is provided in the Roper decision following this statement: “Yet at least from the time of the Court’s decision in Trop, the Court has referred to the laws of other countries and to international authorities as instructive for its interpretation of the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of ‘cruel and unusual punishments.’”¹⁰⁰ The statement both emphasizes the presence of a Supreme Court precedent that prioritizes the incorporation of international standards in the interpretation of the Eighth Amendment more generally and also extends that precedent to the Supreme Court decisions regarding juvenile life sentences.

The Supreme Court opinions in the Miller Trilogy also highlighted the importance of domestic policy changes in shaping the concept of evolving standards of decency in Eighth Amendment doctrine. Consistent throughout the opinions was an emphasis on the arguments offered to them comparing a particular state and its codes with the criminal codes of the rest of the United States. Beginning in Roper, the Court drew parallels between the state of the nation’s death penalty policies at the time of the Atkins decision, which famously ruled to narrow the usage of the death penalty by deeming the execution of the mentally disabled, unconstitutional. At the time of Roper only three years later, Justice Kennedy noted that, “30 States prohibit the juvenile death penalty, comprising 12 that have rejected the death penalty altogether and 18 that maintain it but, by express provision or judicial interpretation, exclude juveniles from its reach.”¹⁰¹ By drawing that parallel, Kennedy emphasized the weight that domestic shifts in criminal justice laws have for Supreme Court rulings as a matter of precedent. This is confirmed as Kennedy’s further argued that “the same consistency of direction of change has been demonstrated”¹⁰² and that the Court did “still consider the change..” from the last case to consider the death penalty for juveniles to this case “…to be significant.”¹⁰³

In Justice Anthony Kennedy’s second majority opinion written for the Miller Trilogy in Graham v. Florida, additional emphasis is laid on the importance of considering nationwide domestic policy change, but in Graham this is in respect to sentences of life without parole for juveniles. As previously noted, the profile of state policy looked different in Graham than it did in Roper, with a majority of states permitting life without parole sentences for juveniles. In addition, federal law permitted the sentence for juveniles, as mentioned by Justice Kennedy in the majority opinion for Graham v. Florida.¹⁰⁴ In fact, the Supreme Court found evidence of a national consensus against the sentence in this case to be “incomplete and unavailing.”¹⁰⁵ However even in the Court’s rejection of the notion that such evidence existed in this case as strongly as it did in Roper v. Simmons, the Supreme Court’s majority still indicates the importance of using this kind of policy-based evidence in forming evolving standards of decency. To begin their opinion, the majority in the court quoted the Atkins opinion, stating, “The analysis begins with objective indicia of national consensus. ‘[T]he clearest and most reliable objective evidence of contemporary values is the legislation enacted by the country’s legislatures,’”¹⁰⁶ outlining the role that state policy changes are intended to have in Supreme Court decisions determining the constitutionality of juvenile life sentences.

Authored by Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, the opinion in Miller v. Alabama, determining the unconstitutionality of mandatory life without parole sentences for juveniles, also establishes a doctrinal necessity for the Supreme Court to factor state policy on JLWOP into the formation of evolving standards of decency. Justice Kagan recognizes and still rejects the State of Alabama’s argument that “because many States impose mandatory life-without-parole sentences on juveniles, we (The Court) may not hold the practice unconstitutional.”¹⁰⁷ On the contrary, though 29 jurisdictions at the time allowed mandatory life without parole for juveniles processed and convicted as adults through court proceedings, she and the justices that comprised the majority in this case assert that the State’s case was weaker than the argument of national consensus that was rejected in Graham by Justice Kennedy. This weakness was due to the difference in nature that the consistent and unreduced use of JLWOP by the states for homicide crimes at the time of Miller compared to Roper and Graham, and for the way that Miller was not imposing categorical bans on a sentence.

A principal factor that Justice Kagan influences the Court’s decision for convicted juvenile defendant, Evan Miller is scientific evidence. Rather than focusing on national consensus to form evolving standards of decency, the Court’s reasoning was informed by evolving standards of decency and defining the proportionality of punishment for a juvenile. Though only one case set into precedent the application of international consensus, and two set into precedent the application of national consensus, all three Miller Trilogy cases indicate that scientific evidence regarding the status of the juvenile mind and its inherent differences from adults, should shape the ruling of a case.

Beginning with Roper, the Supreme Court weighed and incorporated evidence of youth’s poor impulse inhibition and rational decision-making skills with legal notions of reduced culpability. Based on the Supreme Court’s determination in Atkins v. Virginia that capital punishment must only be reserved for “a narrow category of the most serious crimes”¹⁰⁸ in Roper, Justice Anthony Kennedy identified three reasons rooted in the biological differences between juveniles under the age of 18 and adults that “demonstrate that juvenile offenders cannot with reliability be classified among the worst offenders.”¹⁰⁹ The three unique qualities of youth that Justice Kennedy names in the Roper opinion were, a “lack of maturity and an underdeveloped sense of responsibility;” a vulnerability and susceptibility for “negative influences and outside pressures, including peer pressure;” and finally, the character of juveniles is not fully formed and in fact “transitory.”¹¹⁰ Therefore, these qualities made the punishment of death for them cruel and unusual, when for adults it was and remains presently considered acceptable. However, the majority did not just blindly accept these factors based on the arguments posed by the attorney for Christopher Simmons. Instead, they relied upon various contemporary studies that revealed and corroborated this evidence. In fact, Kennedy quoted from accredited sources such as the peer reviewed, American Psychologist and renown psychologists such as Erik Erikson.¹¹¹ In incorporating these sources into its decision to support their holding, the Supreme Court drew support from the science of adolescent psychology and its inherent effects on juvenile culpability. This research asserted: “Once the diminished culpability of juveniles is recognized, it is evident that the penological justifications for the death penalty apply to them with lesser force than to adults.”¹¹²

However, as was much later noted by Attorney Bryan Stevenson in his oral argument for Miller v. Alabama, these deficits exist in minors regardless of the crime. The Supreme Court would affirm this through their application of scientific evidence in Graham v. Florida years before to exclude non-homicide crimes from being subject to JLWOP sentences. Echoing the research deemed crucial to deciding the unconstitutionality of the death penalty for children, Justice Kennedy made repeated reference to those three unique qualities of juvenile offenders deemed constitutionally significant to narrow the forms of punishment a child could endure. As referenced above, they include a lack of maturity, vulnerability and susceptibility for detrimental influences and outside pressures, and the still unformed character of juveniles. ¹¹³ Building upon the precedent set in Roper, and the arguments offered by Terrence Graham’s attorneys, the majority opinion concluded: “No recent data provide reason to reconsider the Court’s observations in Roper about the nature of juveniles. As petitioner’s amici point out, developments in psychology and brain science continue to show fundamental differences between juvenile and adult minds,” by applying these differences as a definitive matter of importance, fact, and compulsion crucial to answering constitutional questions about JLWOP.¹¹⁴ Once more, there is a clear pattern of scientific citation to support their ruling for Graham in this case. Secondarily, the science informed the justices when drawing the line of what they considered to be the only acceptable application of life without parole sentences for juveniles. Anthony Kennedy wrote, “to justify life without parole on the assumption that the juvenile offender forever will be a danger to society requires the sentencer to make a judgment that the juvenile is incorrigible. The characteristics of juveniles make that judgment questionable.”¹¹⁵ As will be discussed below, this holding, based upon the evolved standards of decency driven by science would be of great importance in Jones v. Mississippi.

Finally, in Miller v. Alabama those inherently unique qualities of youth that informed the holdings in Roper and Graham would prevail in an absence of state policy change acting as indicia towards evolving standards of decency. Though brief in her remarks, Justice Elena Kagan who wrote for the majority in this case concluded that mandatory life without parole sentencing schemes for youth were not only incompatible with the holdings of Graham and Roper, but they were also unjust given the role those deficits play in juvenile impulse inhibition and rational decision-making processes. Before rendering their decision on mandatory JLWOP sentences, the Court interpreted precedent and affirmed Attorney Bryan Stevenson’s arguments. Reflecting on Miller in the context of Graham, the Court says,

Graham insists that youth matters in determining the appropriateness of a lifetime of incarceration without the possibility of parole… And in other contexts as well, the characteristics of youth, and the way they weaken rationales for punishment, can render a life-without-parole sentence disproportionate.¹¹⁶

After arguing that the Graham decision made the death penalty and life without parole analogous sentences for juveniles due to their unique characteristics, Justice Kagan and the majority outlined the logic for their ruling within this framework. Because the death penalty requires individualized sentencing, and the Graham court concluded that JLWOP could be akin to the death penalty, the majority wrote, “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.”¹¹⁷

In conjunction with Graham, Miller v. Alabama set into precedent numerous views on JLWOP and made mandatory several standards for review when sentencing juveniles. Firstly, the psychological differences in children make life sentences for them akin to capital punishment. Due to this, a juvenile life sentence penalty must be subject to the highest standards of review by lower court sentencing bodies. Moreover, as in Miller, the review must also be subject to the precedents set in death penalty Supreme Court cases.¹¹⁸ Secondly, not only does juvenile status matter in sentencing, but the Supreme Court in Graham and Miller stated that in many cases, youth status precludes the application of certain sentences for certain minors.¹¹⁹ In other words, the unique factors of youth are the most paramount factor for consideration when sentencing, and is enough to render a punishment disproportionate.¹²⁰ For the Supreme Court, these factors make interpretation of the Eighth Amendment different for juveniles and adults. Thirdly, and most pertinent to Jones v. Mississippi the Supreme Court set the precedent that the punishment of life without parole for juveniles is only acceptable for the children found “permanently incorrigible” by the courts that hear their case.¹²¹ Moreover, the Court has even acknowledged that this concept of “permanent incorrigibility” is difficult to discern as a quality present in youth at all.¹²² All three cases, Roper, Graham, and Miller did not only set important legal precedents for hearing these juvenile-related Eighth Amendment cases, but also created procedural and ethical standards regarding the way that they decide them. Namely, these procedural and ethical standards taking into account changing societal standards in addition to modern scientific findings about the juvenile brain that culminate in a general standard of behavior imposing as many protections for youth in sentencing as possible.

Jones v. Mississippi (2021) and the Downfall of the Miller Trilogy

In Jones v. Mississippi, the Court rejected evolving scientific findings about the unique sentencing needs of juveniles that provided support for its rationale in the Miller Trilogy line of cases, which included Roper v, Simmons, Graham v. Florida, and Miller v. Alabama, as discussed above. The attorney for Brett Jones, who at fifteen years old stabbed his grandfather to death and was subject to JLWOP in Mississippi, called on the court to recognize the unique qualities of youth and the implications that they have on sentencing, and honor the holdings of these previous cases. Jones v. Mississippi, however, resulted in a very different outcome. The Supreme Court, just nine years after their landmark decision in Miller, ruled instead in favor of the state of Mississippi.

Between Miller v. Alabama and Jones v. Mississippi, the Court decided another case, Montgomery v. Louisiana (2016), that is important to understanding the arguments presented in Jones. At the time, the Supreme Court was comprised of the same justices seated at the bench in Miller, with Justices Sotomayor, Ginsburg, Kagan, Breyer, and Roberts joining Justice Anthony Kennedy, who wrote for their majority. Montgomery v. Louisiana established that Miller retroactively applied. Crucially, though, Montgomery stated that “Miller did bar life without parole . . . for all but the rarest of juvenile offenders, those whose crimes reflect permanent incorrigibility.”¹²³ In this case, the majority’s rationale ensured that this severe punishment was given as rarely as possible for convicted youth. They reiterated this point several times throughout Montgomery. While emphasizing the matter of permanent incorrigibility, the Court also stated,

Louisiana suggests that Miller cannot have made a constitutional distinction between children whose crimes reflect transient immaturity and those whose crimes reflect irreparable corruption because Miller did not require trial courts to make a finding of fact regarding a child’s incorrigibility… That this finding is not required, however, speaks only to the degree of procedure Miller mandated in order to implement its substantive guarantee.¹²⁴

This determination was considered to have opened the door for and even encouraged the implementation of this official fact finding of “permanent incorrigibility” in the states’ courts, or the constitutional challenge compelling one in Jones.¹²⁵

Brett Jones’ attorney attempted to emphasize this point 2021, relying on the precedent set by Miller and calling on the types of arguments used by the litigators that came before him and the holdings in the Miller Trilogy and Montgomery. Although the argument focused on procedure, Attorney Shapiro drew upon both the scientific community’s conclusions on adolescent psychology, and the evolved standards founded upon them. He opened his argument by stating, “Settled law recognizes the scientific, legal, and moral truth that most children, even those who commit grievous crimes, are capable of redemption,”¹²⁶ as a basis to advocate for that higher standard of review to their cases. Though the justices questioned him on whether this deviated from the original intention of the Eighth Amendment, the attorney for defendant Brett Jones argued that a mandated implicit or explicit finding by a sentencing judge of whether a given defendant fits within the “permanent incorrigibility” rule was the natural and practical edification of a rule already set into precedent in Miller and Montgomery.¹²⁷ Despite the precedents established by the holdings of the Miller Trilogy, and however frequent that emphasis on a necessity for only the “permanently incorrigible” to be sentenced to JLWOP, the Court was not persuaded by these arguments.

The Supreme Court that heard the Miller Trilogy oral arguments was a very different court than the one that had heard the oral arguments in Jones v. Mississippi. The Court that decided the Miller Trilogy and Montgomery was nearly evenly split, with Kennedy as the median justice. The conservatives were John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Antonin Scalia while the liberal wing originally included John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, and David Souter. After the retirements of Souter was replaced by Sotomayor and Stevens was replaced by Elena Kagan. By the time of Jones v. Mississippi, the Supreme Court had a strong conservative majority made up of six justices: Clarence Thomas, John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy ConeyBarrett. Kavanaugh wrote the majority opinion denying the petitioner’s request in this case.

However, the fact of a conservative majority was not a new phenomenon. In fact, a conservative majority was present throughout all of the Miller Trilogy. The Jones’ conservative majority is quite different because all of the current Republican appointed justices share the conservative legal movement’s ideology.¹²⁸ One consequence is that there has been a shift in the ideology of the median justice as compared to the views of the general public. A decade-long longitudinal study conducted for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) recorded the trends in the Supreme Court’s ideology compared to that of the public up until the year when Jones was decided in 2021. The study found that not one, but two shifts in the median justice’s political leaning had occurred between the year when Miller was decided in 2012, and Jones in 2021.¹²⁹ The researchers found that the ideology of the median justice shifted from Kennedy to Roberts upon his retirement in 2018, and from Roberts to Kavanaugh in 2020 after the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg.¹³⁰ In addition, when she was replaced with Justice Barrett, the Supreme Court went from having a 5-4 conservative majority to a 6-3 conservative supermajority,¹³¹ diminishing the pressure of the median justice to be the “tie-breaker” in cases involving controversial constitutional issues such as juvenile sentencing.

Even more noteworthy, this study additionally reported that this shift in the views of the justices on the Supreme Court moved it “to the ideological right of roughly three quarters of all Americans” based on surveys taken from Americans on their stances on issues that the Court decided in those terms.¹³² As of May 2021, twenty-five states and Washington, DC, had banned JLWOP.¹³³ As the data indicate, there was now a growing trend amongst states in America to view this punishment as unacceptable or unnecessary, a metric similar to the evolving standards of decency criterion used by the Court. Consequently, the conservative supermajority’s ideology was now well to the of right of the American public’s views on matters of juvenile sentencing.

The language and holding in Jones v. Mississippi depart from the Supreme Court’s values, precedents, and intent throughout the Miller Trilogy the justices do not accept the science and psychology that supports more lenient treatment of juvenile offenders. Professor Cara H. Drinan of the Catholic University of American Law school, a well-known author of JWLOP scholarly literature, refers to Jones v. Mississippi (2021) as the “quiet burial” of the Miller Trilogy and its precedent for a variety of similar reasons.¹³⁴ Drinan asserts that in the Miller Trilogy cases Justice Kennedy used language that made the well-being of juvenile offenders a centerpiece of his opinions. He recognized a youthful prisoner's special need for “hope” and “reconciliation with society,”¹³⁵ and he insisted that states provide them “some meaningful opportunity to obtain release based on demonstrated maturity and rehabilitation.”¹³⁶ The Supreme Court in Miller is less attuned to these concerns. Later, Justices Kennedy and Kagan swapped language such as “murderer” for “juvenile offender” in Graham¹³⁷ or “juvenile arrested for murder” in Miller,¹³⁸ thereby not dehumanizing these juveniles by routinely calling them “murderers” and always recognizing their youth in their opinions. Drinan found however that in Jones v. Mississippi Justice Bret Kavanaugh uses the term “murderer” to describe these children at least sixteen times.¹³⁹

Additionally, in Jones, references to or reliance upon scientific studies regarding the qualities of youth that necessitate a distinction between those who are permanently incorrigible and those who are not are not included.¹⁴⁰ This is an especially jarring gap in the Jones opinion given precedent set by the Court based on this knowledge stating, that it is “difficult…to differentiate between the juvenile offender whose crime reflects unfortunate yet transient immaturity, and the rare juvenile offender whose crime reflects irreparable corruption.”¹⁴¹ Instead of acknowledging the true holdings of the Miller and Graham courts which determined that juvenile offenders’ internal attributes and external circumstances “preclude a finding of a degree of culpability,”¹⁴² the Jones court simply diminishes these decisions to only say that “youth matters in sentencing.”¹⁴³ Thirdly, the Court does not employ an Eighth Amendment analysis that values scientific and psychological evidence in addition to evidence of evolving standards of decency from the states. Instead, they turned to solely rely on examples set by the states, stating “Miller did not identify a single State that, as of that time, made permanent incorrigibility an eligibility criterion for [juvenile] life-without-parole sentences.”¹⁴⁴ The Court completely ignoring the important efforts states have taken at the time of oral argument in Jones to reduce the use of JLWOP sentences, which include 25 states having abolished them and another 10 states having no one serving that sentence.¹⁴⁵

In his concurrence with the majority in Jones v. Mississippi Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a very revealing interpretation of the holding in Jones. He says,

First, we could follow Montgomery’s logic and hold that the ‘legality’ of Jones’ sentence turns on whether his crime in fact ‘reflect[s] permanent incorrigibility.’ 577 U. S., at 205, 209. Or we could just acknowledge that Montgomery had no basis in law or the Constitution. The majority, however, selects a third way: Overrule Montgomery in substance but not in name.¹⁴⁶

In this, he revealed that the intention of the Jones’ court was never to continue to expand upon the protections provided to a very vulnerable class of individuals whose qualities may preclude life without parole sentences for them, but instead to place a decided halt to that progress and quietly dismantle sixteen-years’ worth of precedent, shaking things up for the state of juvenile sentencing in the country.

Chapter Four: State Responses to the Miller Trilogy and Jones: Case Study One

It is important to note that the Miller Trilogy’s holdings greatly affected the ways in which state justice systems could function. By the year 2012, the states’ ability to sentence juveniles to life without parole had narrowed significantly. Specifically, after the Graham v. Florida decision in 2010, states could no longer impose JLWOP sentences for non-homicidal offenses. As discussed in Chapter Three, the Miller ruling in 2012 further prohibited from states the JLWOP sentence even on juveniles who committee homicides. The legal reasoning behind this line of cases acknowledging the diminished culpability and capacity for change in youth, and the social implications of the Miller Trilogy left the states with a blueprint as to how to approach juvenile criminal cases.

In 2011, before Miller v. Alabama had been decided, only five states had banned juvenile life without parole.¹⁴⁷ Currently, twenty-eight states have banned juvenile life without parole and a further five currently have no one serving juvenile life without parole sentences (See Fig. 1)¹⁴⁸ This rapid transformation of state law constitutes a significant aspect of juvenile justice reform in the states. In addition to these twenty-eight states that abolished the practice entirely, six states have also reformed juvenile life without parole by re-writing penalties that were struck down by Graham v. Florida and by eliminating life without parole for felony murder.¹⁴⁹ Desire for justice for those who were wronged prior to the Miller Trilogy also prompted many states to seek retroactive remedies for youth sentenced to life in prison without parole. By 2019, nearly 400 individuals who faced this sentence before Miller v. Alabama had returned to their homes and communities following parole and resentencing hearings in their state and local courts.¹⁵⁰ This evidence in the states suggests they are more likely to continue take the lead in abolishing JLWOP than is the Supreme Court, especially after its ruling in Jones v. Mississippi.

In America, federalism and a system of separation of powers provide the states with various options to limit and abolish juvenile life without parole. The last twelve years have generated examples of states utilizing the executive, legislative, and judicial branches to reform juvenile sentencing reform. Additionally, these reforms made by states can have the distinct and notable effect of influencing the decisions of states around them, such as the waves of juvenile life without parole reforms and abolishment seen after the first few states took action against the sentencing practice after the Miller Trilogy.

The two most common avenues states have taken to narrow and eradicate the use of JLWOP have been through the legislative and judicial branches, sometimes a mix of both. The legislative channel most often involves state lawmakers acting in response to the national judicial precedent set by the Miller Trilogy. In addition, some states rely upon voter sentiment and scientific research to support reform efforts. In a research report released in 2020, the Justice Collaborative Institute and The Fair and Just Prosecution organization reported the in a poll of a nationally representative sample of voters that “a majority of Americans recognize that children are uniquely equipped to grow and change, and believe criminal judicial means of changing juvenile life without parole laws.”¹⁵¹

Despite the conservative Republican majority’s opinion in Jones, the poll reported that “Two-thirds of respondents, including two-thirds of Republicans, believe the juvenile justice system should focus more on prevention and rehabilitation rather than on punishment and incarceration.”¹⁵² The way this national attitude towards juvenile life without parole is channeled through the state legislative body is one of the defining components of the legislative route to juvenile life without parole reform that differentiates this mode and its outcomes from the federal court’s system. This polling suggests on the question of juvenile sentencing reform the majority in Jones is out of step even with the views of Republican voters who responded to the survey. Furthermore, it should be noted that reform efforts often center on state constitutional protections, which often afford protections extending far beyond those mandated by the federal Constitution and the Supreme Court’s interpretation of it.¹⁵³

Judicial initiative in the state has taken on a very similar shape to the processes and considerations of the Miller Trilogy cases but on a far more localized level, bearing in mind scientific evidence and judicial precedent in their decisions. Secondly, they involve challenging the already often liberal state constitutions, as state constitutions have the tendency to offer protections extending far beyond those mandated by the federal constitution and the Supreme Court’s interpretation of it.¹⁵⁴

In February 2023, the state of Illinois became the 26th state in the union to ban juvenile life without parole,¹⁵⁵ bringing juvenile justice reform to a tipping point, as now over half of the states in the nation have taken action against the controversial sentence. In order to understand the way in which state initiatives bear on the future of JLWOP reform, the efforts of two states will be analyzed. The states chosen for the purpose of this examination are Tennessee and Connecticut for two primary reasons. The first is that each of these states demonstrate the successes of the legislative and judicial paths as a means for juvenile justice reform: Connecticut chose the legislative approach while Tennessee adopted a judicial reform process. Apart from different methods, these states also have notably different political ideologies and historical relationships with reform. The analysis below will highlight the promising juvenile reform options provided by both approaches.

Connecticut

From the year 2013 to 2016, the Center for the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing for Youth reported that three states per year eliminated life without parole as a sentencing option for children.¹⁵⁶ Connecticut was one of the three states that made this change in 2015, joining eight other east coast states that have banned juvenile life without parole during the past decade. Connecticut made this policy shift when Senate Bill 796, known now as Public Act No. 15-84,¹⁵⁷ was signed. This legislative action taken by the Connecticut legislature during a time of favorability towards such a reform By June 2015 when Public Act No. 15-84 was signed into law, Connecticut’s political landscape was ripe for the implementation of this kind of juvenile justice reform. Voting registration records from October 2014 indicate that there were 712,925 registered Democrats in the state at the time and 407,519 Republicans,¹⁵⁸ indicating a potential advantage for politicians supporting progressive juvenile justice reform. A Pew Research Trust Report published in November 2014 indicated that at the time, that 75% of Democrats in America believed that in the justice system, juveniles should be treated differently than adults compared to just over half of Republicans.¹⁵⁹

Additionally other legislative reforms that occurred in the years leading up to Public Act No. 15-84 were good indicators of changing attitudes around juvenile justice in that state. In 2014, Connecticut General Assembly established the Juvenile Justice Policy and Oversight Committee (JJPOC) through Public Act 14-217. The committed focused on reviewing and managing continued juvenile justice reform through actions such as assessing the impact of Raise the Age legislation in other states and investigating the existence of disproportionate minority contact with police.¹⁶⁰ However, support for juvenile justice reform in Connecticut before juvenile life without parole was banned did not only come from Connecticut’s politicians. However, support for juvenile justice reform in Connecticut before juvenile life without parole was banned did not only come from Connecticut’s politicians. In 2014 and 2015, news outlets such as the Hartford Courant and Connecticut Mirror published op-eds calling the legislature to raise the age at which an individual could be tried in adult court from 18 to 21.¹⁶¹ Op-eds also highlighted the work of advocates who worked to improve the treatment of juveniles then incarcerated in the criminal justice system.¹⁶²

The multitude of these demographic and historical factors played a significant role in Connecticut’s readiness to eliminate juvenile life without parole through legislation that occurred soon after the Supreme Court’s ruling in Miller v. Alabama and following a landmark Connecticut Supreme Court case, State v. Riley argued in September of 2014.

State v. Riley

In November 2006, seventeen-year-old Akeem Riley of Hartford, Connecticut who had been enmeshed in gang activity for some time, drove past a group of teenagers, including sixteen-year-old Trey Davis of Bloomfield, Connecticut, and his friends. He removed a semiautomatic firearm from the car, and pointing it out of the window, fired several shots at the crowd, believing someone responsible for a gang-related shooting the previous week to be there. Instead, the bullets fired from the barrel of Akeem Riley’s gun struck three innocent bystanders, injuring two, aged thirteen and twenty-one, and killing Trey Davis. Akeem Riley was subsequently arrested for his crimes after another incident two months after this crime during which the same gun was used and his profile was matched to that of the perpetrator of the driveby shooting that killed Trey Davis. Officially becoming a justice-involved youth, Akeem Riley was tried and sentenced as an adult under the Connecticut criminal justice system. The jury convicted him of one count of homicide murder, two counts of attempt to commit murder, and two counts of assault in the first degree. For Akeem Riley, these charges and the decision made by the sitting judge in the case sentenced him to a total of one hundred years behind bars without parole, the functional equivalent of a life sentence without parole.¹⁶³

The trial court rendered its decision in 2009, three years before the Supreme Court’s ruling in Miller v. Alabama, which stated that the Eighth Amendment barred the mandatory sentencing of life without parole to juveniles. Following this decision, Riley and his lawyers appealed his case to the Connecticut Appellate court, arguing that his sentence violated his Eighth Amendment right prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment as well as his Fourteenth Amendment right to due process of law.¹⁶⁴ Riley and his lawyers further contended that Miller required a court to consider the ways in which juveniles are psychologically different than adults as determined in Miller. However, the appellate court upheld the sentence and original ruling of the trial court, arguing that Miller’s requirement to consider this type of evidence only applied to cases in which the sentencing scheme resembled that of mandatory life without parole. Mr. Riley’s sentence was not mandatory. Furthermore, the appellate court ruled that Connecticut’s sentencing scheme already aligned with these requirements.¹⁶⁵ After this ruling, Akeem Riley and his legal team appealed this decision to the Connecticut Supreme Court in 2014.

The Connecticut Supreme Court ruled to overturn the decision of the Court of Appeals and provide Akeem Riley with a new sentencing hearing. One can argue that this ruling was both influenced by recent legislative action in the state and was also a catalyst to the statute that would eventually ban juvenile life without parole in Connecticut. An aspect of the ruling in State v. Riley that likely influenced the legislature’s passage of S.B. 796 (also known as Public Act 15- 84) determination that Connecticut criminal justice system’s handling of juvenile offenders was not consistent with the requirements under Miller v. Alabama.¹⁶⁶ Ultimately, Connecticut’s juvenile criminal reform of JLWOP sentencing was accomplished by the legislature only after the state Supreme Court decided State v. Riley. Nevertheless, the ongoing legislative reform efforts appear to have played a role in the Court’s ruling. Before finalizing their ruling on this case, the Connecticut Supreme Court declined to hear Riley’s claim regarding Graham v. Florida because the legislative branch was considering juvenile sentencing reforms stemming from recommendations made by a sentencing commission.¹⁶⁷

State v. Riley (2015) relied heavily on the broad interpretation of the U.S. Constitution and the perception of the Constitution as a living document that was used in the majority opinions of the Miller Trilogy. This court also went further and expanded upon it. Justice McDonald, writing for the majority, stated, “We begin by acknowledging that Miller is replete with references to mandatory life without parole and like terms,” thereby acknowledging that the United States Supreme Court’s ruling in Miller v. Alabama was limited in its breadth.¹⁶⁸ However, due to numerous factors that the Connecticut Supreme Court found relevant, such as the fact that Miller and Graham equated life sentences for juvenile life without parole to the death penalty, the majority in this case drew an important conclusion. They argued, “Miller logically indicates that, if a sentencing scheme permits the imposition of that punishment on a juvenile homicide offender, the trial court must consider the offender’s ‘chronological age and its hallmark features’ as mitigating against such a severe sentence.”¹⁶⁹

The Connecticut Supreme Court’s decision in State v. Riley (2015), while it did not go as far as to JLWOP sentences are in fact unconstitutional, paved the way for the legislative ban, providing a potential blueprint for juvenile justice reform. In other words, by further narrowing the use of JLWOP sentences and extending the protocol mandated by Miller to review aspects of a youth’s reduced culpability in Riley. Consequently, State v. Riley (2015) set the tone for state legislators who sought to pass JLWOP reform measures, especially because the state Supreme Court had drawn the analogy between life without parole and the death penalty in the Miller Trilogy cases discussed above.

P.A. 15-84 and the Abolition of Juvenile Life Without Parole

Following the State v. Riley decision on March 10th, 2015, prompted swift action from the Connecticut legislature to pass a pending bill, at the time known as S.B. 796, but which became Public Act No. 15-84 when in it was signed into law. The first draft of the bill was introduced in the Connecticut Senate in January of 2015, by seven Democratic senators whose party slightly favored increased juvenile justice reform according to data available at the time.¹⁷⁰ The first iteration of the bill proposed to update the Connecticut general statutes. The bill was intended “to comply with the Supreme Court of the United States by providing for review of sentences by persons who were under eighteen years of age when they committed their crimes, and providing guidelines for sentencing of juveniles convicted of certain serious felonies.”¹⁷¹ While the bill did not specifically say that the purpose was to ban juvenile life without parole sentences, providing review for these sentences in the language of the bill (with reference to Miller and Graham), indicates the importance of federal judicial decisions for state action on this matter.

In addition, various other factors played a role in how the bill was shaped and changed over time, including advocacy from various groups in Connecticut and nationally. Importantly, a key strength of this legislative means of criminal reform is lobbying, as it permits citizens to become part of the input of juvenile reform conversation. Several prominent national and state organizations such as the Connecticut chapter of the national ACLU¹⁷² and Connecticut Voices for Children¹⁷³ advocated in favor of this bill when it was still in the Connecticut Senate and House of Representatives. Most of these organizations also published press releases. For example, in a press release, the ACLU of Connecticut wrote, “Connecticut lawmakers must end the disgraceful practice of sentencing children to mandatory life sentences without possibility of parole.”¹⁷⁴ Furthermore the organization provided relevant statistical evidence regarding the disproportionate effect these sentences have on children of color to bolster their claim. Likewise, Connecticut Voices for Children, a research-based organization aimed at improving the lives of youth in the state, published and sent testimony to the Judiciary Committee considering the bill and expressed their support for SB 796. They argued that the “ law simply gives young people the opportunity to present how they have grown and come to take responsibility for their actions.”¹⁷⁵ This group also echoed claims consistent with Miller v. Alabama reasoning and stated that “S.B. 796 helps ensure that juvenile sentencing rules incorporate the scientific and legal consensus that has emerged concerning treatment of juveniles by the courts.”¹⁷⁶ Both of these examples of community lobbying, from the ACLU and from Connecticut Voices for Children were intended both to raise awareness for the bill for their wider memberships and to show the lawmaking bodies their support for the bill through strong language emphasizing the magnitude of the issue at hand.

After referral to the Judiciary Committee, the bill went through several iterations before reaching its final form. The language of the secondary draft of the bill in section (f) included an essential regulation barring the imposition of a juvenile life without parole sentence that stated:

a person convicted of one or more crimes committed while such person was under eighteen years of age, who is incarcerated on or after October 1, 2015, and who received a definite sentence or aggregate sentence of more than ten years for such crimes prior to, on or after October 1, 2015, may be allowed to go at large on parole,¹⁷⁷

This provision remained in the final version of the bill signed into law in June of 2015. Furthermore, the final version of the bill, in the words of the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth, “goes further than Miller” because it requires judges to consider the hallmark features of adolescence and scientific differences between adults and children in all cases in which a child is sentenced as an adult for serious crimes. It additionally outlines “youth related factors” for the parole boards reviewing these sentences to consider.¹⁷⁸ The bill, which was signed into law as Public Act No. 15-48 by Connecticut Governor, Dannel Malloy on June 23, 2015, embodied the evolving standards of decency standard that was supported by the science regarding adolescent brain development. The bill reflected the more favorable views of America towards juvenile criminal reform and abolished JLWOP sentences in Connecticut.

Connecticut As A Model: What The Country Could Look Like Without JLWOP

“Going further than Miller”¹⁷⁹ with the legislative action taken in Connecticut would allow Public Act No. 15-84 to have drastic effects in shaping a vision of what a youth criminal’s future without a JLWOP sentence can look like nationally. With the sentence banned, juveniles in Connecticut now are subject to new policies and parole services that are aligned with scientific data on adolescent development, namely that criminal activity declines sharply after the age of thirty.¹⁸⁰ In addition scientific studies confirm that long sentences do not act as better deterrents of crime than the shortest possible sentence for the respective crime.¹⁸¹ In fact, a study conducted by Connecticut’s own Institute of Municipal and Regional Policy in 2017 focused on recidivism in the state examined data in Public Act. No. 15-24 and concluded, “The prevalence of offending tends to increase, peaking in late adolescence (ages 15 to 19) and then declining in their early 20s.”¹⁸²

Eight years after the ban on JLWOP, Connecticut has been able to move towards more progressive criminal reform policies that fall in line with these scientific findings, such as S.B. 952. This bill, passed in the summer of 2023, broadens parole eligibility, and is specifically targeted at those who commit crimes before the age at which scientists agree the adolescent brain stops maturing and when a sense of impulse control is developed fully. The bill states that a person who commits a crime and is sentenced to more than ten years may be eligible for parole “if such person is serving a sentence of fifty years or less, such person shall be eligible for parole after serving sixty per cent of the sentence or twelve years, whichever is greater, or if such person is serving a sentence of more than fifty years, such person shall be eligible for parole after serving thirty years.”¹⁸³ As a result, someone who commits a crime during this age range of reduced culpability will be subject to better opportunities for parole. Likewise, it also permits parole at an age where many of the convicts are unlikely to reoffend, past the age of 30 years old. Someone who is twenty-one years old and charged with thirty years in prison for example, has the opportunity to be released at the age of thirty-three instead of fifty in order to provide an opportunity for career and education success that would not be possible under the terms of a longer sentence.

Connecticut’s parole system is further fortified by a residential program attempting to reduce recidivism for these individuals. Newly released criminals are mandated to stay in a halfway house for at least ninety days, with the typical stay spanning from three to six months. In partnership with the Connecticut Department of Corrections, the state offers further transitional housing programs in which inmates are housed with another person who is formerly incarcerated and a case manager assigned to the building.¹⁸⁴ In the words of journalist Kelan Lyons of the Connecticut Mirror, the attitude of the Connecticut parole board has followed “in the spirit of the bill,” the first iteration of it which failed passage in 2021, providing commutations of sentences to eleven prisoners in Connecticut who committed crimes as minors and before the age of 25.¹⁸⁵ The Mirror article recorded interviews with these prisoners that documented stories consistent with the opportunities for reform that juveniles who have committed crimes before their brains finished developing are likely to have. Prisoner Demetrius Miller, who acknowledged his guilt, said to the parole board, “The very worst thing that anybody can do in this world, I did.” Others expressing the determination to apply themselves for good like prisoner Juan Maldonado who stated, “What I’ve been doing is try to better myself, and to help those that are in the same or similar circumstance.”¹⁸⁶ These moving statements and accounts from real prisoners who experienced confirm that incarcerated youth are capable of undergoing significant, positive change if given the opportunity for early release.

Connecticut’s successful legislative actions that ban juvenile life without parole demonstrate its commitments to the progressive legal precedent set by Justice Kennedy and the Supreme Court in the Miller Trilogy of cases. The judges and lawmakers involved in State v. Riley and the passage of Public Act 15-84 were able to build upon this important series of Supreme Court cases. Furthermore, it is the combination of the Connecticut Supreme Court’s decision in Riley and the legislature’s passage of Public Act 15-84 that brought about necessary and important change to the state’s juvenile sentencing process that was consistent with evolving public attitudes about the proper treatment of youthful offenders in the state.

Chapter Five: State Responses to the Miller Trilogy and Jones: Case Study Two and Conclusions

Tennessee

It should be noted first and foremost that, unlike Connecticut, Tennessee is one of the twenty-two states that has yet to ban JLWOP as a possible sentence for children (See Fig. 1). Yet, the state has implemented some progressive juvenile justice reforms as a result of a 2022 Tennessee’s Supreme Court case, State of Tennessee v. Tyshon Booker.¹⁸⁷ The ruling, which banned mandatory life sentences for children, can perhaps provide a model for other southern states that may seek to reform their approach to juvenile sentencing.

Southern States such as Tennessee have been historically conservative on the topic of juvenile justice reform. Currently, twenty-seven states have yet to ban juvenile life without parole. It is important to note that eight are in the south, six are in the Midwest, five are in the northeast, and three are in the west. Tennessee has a history of imposing harsh penalties on juvenile offenders (See Fig. 1). In 1989, The Tennessee Sentencing Reform Act was passed and classified all felonies according to their seriousness and a defendant’s number of prior convictions. These factors were combined to establish a set of sentencing guidelines. However, in 1995, in response to concerns about legislative prerogatives,¹⁸⁸ the State of Tennessee abolished its Sentencing Commission. The commission was a body made up of specialized professionals in criminal justice who collected and analyzed a broad array of information on sentencing practices in order to make adjustments when necessary. In what can very well be perceived as an abuse of power, in response, the legislature enacted new laws that gradually increased the sentencing schemes laid out in The Tennessee Sentencing Reform Act of 1989.¹⁸⁹ The legislature at the time did not spare the children from these “Truth in Sentencing” initiatives. In fact, these gradual sentencing increases aligned with media’s focus on the fear of violent, incorrigible children known as “superpredators,” and no effort was made to shield juvenile offenders who were transferred to adult courts from these inflated sentences that also applied to adults.

Prior to November 2022, Tennessee’s juvenile justice system was known as “the harshest in the country”¹⁹⁰ because it included an automatic life sentence for juveniles. In 2017, five years prior to this change, Tennessee had thirteen inmates serving life without parole for crimes they committed as children. Furthermore, approximately one hundred inmates convicted as juveniles were serving this mandatory life sentence with parole eligibility limited to their serving fifty-one years in prison first.¹⁹¹

Unlike Connecticut, Tennessee’s political demographics make legislative juvenile justice reform difficult. Tennessee does not require party affiliation declarations when individuals register to vote. As a result, the most reliable data of citizen partisanship comes from the Pew Research Center’s “Religious Landscape Study” conducted in 2014. The survey reveals that 48% of Tennessee residents identify themselves as leaning Republican as compared to only 36% of them identifying as leaning Democrat.¹⁹² The 12% difference is not, however, is not reflected in the makeup of the Tennessee General Assembly. In 2022, the same year that State of Tennessee v. Tyshon Booker was decided, the Tennessee House of Representatives had 71 Republicans and 24 Democrats¹⁹³ while the Tennessee State Senate had 27 Republicans and 6 Democrats.¹⁹⁴ and the Tennessee State Senate had 27 Republicans and 6 Democrats.¹⁹⁵ With the Republican party holding a significant majority in both houses, more conservative juvenile justice policies typically prevail. Moreover, the state is currently involved in ongoing litigation challenging its latest redistricting plan, which underrepresents some minority voters.¹⁹⁶

Republican dominance in the legislature has affected the state’s inability to pass legislation banning juvenile life without parole or their mandatory life sentencing schemes Republicans are more likely than Democrats to support and enact juvenile criminal reform.¹⁹⁷ For example, in 2017 the state legislature, still dominated by Republicans¹⁹⁸ considered a bill to allow juveniles to be eligible for parole after twenty years in prison It was amended to thirty years in prison, even though some Tennessee legislators believed that these individuals deserved to serve more time for the crimes they committed as youth.¹⁹⁹ Despite their opposition, the bill was eventually enacted.

It is likely that Tennessee’s failure in bringing about legislative juvenile justice reform prompted proponents of reform to utilize the judicial process instead. Often, lawyers, advocates, and other civil rights activist groups such as the ALCU, the Sentencing Project, and the Equal Justice Initiative bring “test cases” to a state’s supreme court or the region’s federal circuit courts as a means to challenge laws in court when legislative action fails to change them. State of Tennessee v. Tyshon Booker, a case brought in 2022, provided an opportunity to bring legal action for reform. One can argue that the facts of the case, the arguments posed, and the justices on the bench created a perfect storm for legal change in a state that had resisted legislative change in the past.

State v. Tyshon Booker (2022): Facts of the Initial Case: In Knoxville, Tennessee, in November 2015, sixteen-year-old Tyshon Booker, entered a car with another juvenile, Bradley Robinson, and a friend of Bradley’s, twenty-six-year-old G’Metrik Caldwell. The reason behind this car ride remains disputed, with the State of Tennessee and their witnesses stating that the purpose was a planned robbery. A neighbor of Tyshon Booker, who testified in his criminal trial, stated that Tyshon told them he and Bradley had wanted to rob the victim, a claim the state attempted to corroborate with the evidence taken from the victim’s cellphone that was found in Tyshon Booker’s pocket upon arrest.²⁰⁰ Tyshon had further told that neighbor that when G’Metrik Caldwell resisted, that Bradley Robinson yelled at Tyshon, who was carrying a weapon at the time, to shoot.²⁰¹ Mr. Booker’s version of the events, however, differ. When he testified, he told the court that he had acted in self-defense, explaining that he and Mr. Robinson rode around with G’Metrik Caldwell for some time, smoking marijuana and taking pills given to him by Mr. Caldwell, something that would have likely altered his mental state at the time of the crime.²⁰² In his account, Mr. Caldwell pulled the car to the curb and an argument broke out when Tyshon noticed him reaching for something on the floor of the car and turning to the front seat of the car. Bradley Robinson apparently yelled, “He got a gun, bro!” and after hearing this, Tyshon Booker drew his own weapon.²⁰³ What facts are not disputed is that six rounds were fired into G’Metrik Caldwell that day, and he did not survive.²⁰⁴

Tyshon Booker and Bradley Robinson, both juveniles at the time, were subsequently arrested and brought to court. The state brought forth two charges of first-degree felony murder and two counts of aggravated robbery, and the jury determined that both boys were guilty on these charges, thereby convicting them. The trial court did not offer Tyshon Booker a sentencing hearing as is customary during a criminal court case such as this one. Instead the two felony murder counts were merged and the judge sentenced this sixteen year old boy to life in prison, as it was the mandatory sentence because these boys were tried as and subject to the same penalties as adults.²⁰⁵ Under Tenn. Code Ann. § 40-35-501(h)(2), this life sentence is means “a sixty-year term with release after fifty-one years if all applicable sentencing credits are earned and retained.”²⁰⁶ Consequently, Tyshon Booker, if he had the opportunity to be released on parole, would be nearly seventy years old. The vast majority of his life under this sentence would be spent in jail, perhaps all of it, for a crime that he committed as a child, before his brain could finish developing a sense of impulse control and a proper perception of his actions and their consequences.

State of Tennessee v. Tyshon Booker (2022): Oral Arguments at the Tennessee Supreme Court The case was appealed to the Tennessee Supreme Court on constitutional grounds. During the oral arguments in State of Tennessee v. Tyshon Booker sought to apply the U.S. Supreme Court’s rulings in Miller v. Alabama and Graham v. Florida and to extend the application of the eighth Amendment to Booker’s case. The appellant’s attorneys based their oral arguments on two prongs. First, they argued that Mr. Booker’s mandatory life sentence constituted “a harsher sentence than a similarly situated juvenile would receive anywhere else in the country,” and it therefore violated the Graham and Miller precedents. Alternatively, they argued that even if the court found otherwise, such a lengthy sentence for a juvenile was still a violation of Tyshon Booker’s Eighth Amendment rights.²⁰⁷

Booker’s counsel raised questions about the specific sentences that trigger the protections of Graham and Miller because the state did not argue that the protections of these landmark cases apply only to those life without parole sentences. The attorneys assert that while the specific facts of the case in Miller pertained to a JLWOP sentence that the opinion Supreme Court’s decision extended to sentences without a “meaningful opportunity for release.”²⁰⁸ “All of the description of what was wrong with that sentence” (in Graham and Miller), Attorney Harwell argued, “is wrong in Mr. Booker’s sentence.”²⁰⁹ The attorney for Mr. Booker goes on to argue that LSWOP for juveniles was defined in Graham as sentences without meaningful opportunity of release and therefore Tyshon Booker would have been offered release after fifty-one years. As Justice Kennedy stated in Graham v. Florida were reiterated, so too Booker’s attorney argued that the rational in defining these sentences relies upon the fact that they “deny a chance for fulfillment outside of prison walls, deny a chance for reconciliation with society, deny a chance to reenter society, to reenter the community, deny a hope of restoration.”²¹⁰

Additionally, Tyshon Booker’s defense advocated for the application of Miller’s requirement for the consideration of a juvenile’s reduced culpability, susceptibility to outside peer pressure like Mr. Booker’s friend’s supposed shouting at him to shoot, and a juvenile’s potential for rehabilitation to be extended to juveniles’ cases with possible lengthy sentences such as Tyshon’s.²¹¹ His attorney pointed out the very correct assumption that they would be facing “a much different scenario here if there had been an avenue for us to present that evidence to be considered.”²¹² He also referenced a medical report that they were not permitted to enter into evidence that detailed Tyshon Booker’s PTSD, his background, and examples of psychological help that a professional examiner determined would help in rehabilitating him. Notably, these are the types of factors that Miller deemed significant as mandatory and necessary in JLWOP sentences, but that could not be considered given Tennessee’s mandatory life sentencing scheme that was applied to Tyshon Booker’s case.

Tyshon Booker’s defense also argued that the mandatory sentencing of a juvenile to at least 51 years to life in prison violated the Eighth Amendment’s provision against cruel and unusual punishment. Mr. Booker’s defense invoked federal standards for cruel and unusual punishments, defined as “contemporary standards, disproportionality of the sentence, and penological objectives,”²¹³ concluding that Tennessee’s mandatory 51-year sentence fails to meet contemporary standards, is wildly disproportionate for a child, and is inconducive to the state’s penological objectives.

Noting Tennessee’s failure to meet contemporary standards, Booker’s attorney argued that “nowhere else would someone convicted of felony murder in Mr. Booker’s situation as a juvenile be given even above a 40-year mandatory minimum.”²¹⁴ Furthermore, to prove the aspect of disproportionality in such a lengthy sentence for a juvenile, the attorney cited the existence of scientific evidence proving the diminished culpability of adolescents. Finally, he made the claim that juvenile sentences like the one imposed on Tyshon Booker go directly against any of the state of federal penological objectives of sentencing. The attorney emphasized: “The idea that a mandatory sentence is imposed on a juvenile in this situation goes against all of the principals of the Sentencing Reform Act regarding consideration of rehabilitation, regarding consideration of a sentence no greater than deserved, regarding an effort to avoid inequalities in the system”²¹⁵ The presentation of these three pieces of evidence proved the ways in which this type of mandatory sentencing scheme that requires children to be eligible for parole only after such a long time in prison constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. The consequence is that such sentencing schemes do not permit an opportunity for parole under the Eighth Amendment.

State of Tennessee v. Tyshon Booker (2022): Ruling

Tyshon Booker’s attorneys ultimately succeeded in reforming juvenile justice in Tennessee by focusing on the cruel and unusual punishment argument. The Tennessee Supreme Court agreed with the appellants in the case that mandatory life sentences for juveniles violate the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. It is significant that much like the Connecticut Supreme Court in State v. Riley (2015),²¹⁶ in its opinion the Tennessee Supreme Court cited both the scientific evidence of reduced culpability in children and the Miller Trilogy’s affirmation of the need to factor juvenile criminal sentencing schemes. However, while the Connecticut Supreme Court applied this to juvenile life without parole sentences, the Tennessee Supreme Court applies this to mandatory life sentences even if those sentences include parole opportunities.

The court relied upon Miller and Graham to consider Attorney Harwell’s arguments and draw this conclusion, stating, “Although this case involves a life sentence, and not death or life without parole, three essential rules can be derived from the Thompson, Roper, Graham, and Miller line of cases when considering proportionality.”²¹⁷ In doing so, the Court recognized the precedent these cases set even for different juvenile sentencing schemes. These rules they outlined included three elements. (1) The Eighth Amendment requires punishment for juveniles even outside of juvenile life without parole sentences to be “graduated and proportioned.” (2) The “steps must be taken to minimize the risk of a disproportionate sentence when juveniles are facing the possible imposition of a state’s harshest punishments.” (3) “these steps, whatever they may be, must allow the sentencer to take the mitigating qualities of youth into account.”²¹⁸ Notably, the court’s inclusion of the phrase “a state’s harshest punishments” in this case extends includes not only mandatory life sentences for juveniles without parole but also those sentences that are mandated, lengthy, and afford the opportunity of parole. Additionally, the Tennessee Supreme Court in a very progressive move pointed out that the “Tennessee is out of step with the rest of the country in the severity of sentences imposed on juvenile homicide offenders.” The Court noted that neighboring states provided earlier opportunities for release and individualized sentencing protocols for juveniles like Tyshon Booker.²¹⁹

In concluding their opinion, the Tennessee Supreme Court determined that it is unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution to automatically sentence a child to life imprisonment with no possibility of release for 51 years, and required that sentencing must be individualized and judges must be allowed to consider a defendant’s youth and particular associated qualities when sentencing. The Court did not accept Booker’s attorneys’ argument that a mandatory life sentence of at least 51 years, if granted parole, should be considered a functional equivalent to juvenile life without parole. The Court stated: “Because we conclude that Tennessee’s mandatory fifty-one- to sixty-year sentence violates the Eighth Amendment, we need not consider Mr. Booker’s arguments that his sentence is equivalent to life without parole and is thus subject to Miller”²²⁰ Tyshon Booker’s sentence was revised to apply the release eligibility provision that the Tennessee General Assembly enacted in 1989 and never repealed, which moves parole eligibility from fifty-one years of his sixty-year sentence served, to eligibility for supervised release on parole after serving between twenty-five and thirty-six years.²²¹ Once again, much like Connecticut’s S.B. 952, this provides for parole eligibility at an age where juvenile defendants’ likelihood to reoffend drops drastically, yet still allows juveniles the opportunity to experience “fulfillment outside of prison walls” and “reconciliation with society,”²²² as Justice Kennedy and Booker’s attorneys argued should be required.

Potential Implications of the Booker Case for the Future of Lengthy Juvenile Sentences

Although Tennessee did not ban juvenile life without parole sentences in the Booker case, the implications of the ruling may well have important consequences for reform in other states that utilize courts and the judicial process. Though the Tennessee Supreme Court refused to recognize mandatory life sentences that still permit parole as functional equivalents to JLWOP sentences as was the case in Miller v. Alabama, the arguments posed by Tyshon Booker’s attorneys provide a means by which the reasoning of Miller v. Alabama (2012) can be extended.

Furthermore, the oral arguments and the court’s ruling suggest implications that might allow possible Eighth Amendment challenges for mandatory and lengthy juvenile sentencing protocols that fail to provide for a juvenile’s diminished culpability, including juvenile life without parole sentences. As the court indicated in the majority opinion, “the United States Supreme Court has not yet addressed the precise question before us.”²²³ By deciding that even sentences that permit the opportunity for parole can be unconstitutional, as in this case, the ruling may provide grounds for a possible federal expansion of Eighth Amendment protections for juveniles against the “cruel and unusual punishments.” Examples include mandatory sentences for juveniles nonwithstanding the definition of “life,” and opportunities for parole that fall far later than what would be considered reasonable given their increased capacity for reform. It is significant that the Supreme Court has taken into consideration the changes imposed by states in its opinions before.²²⁴ Actions such as Tennessee’s, taken towards reforming the juvenile justice system to conform with evolving standards in other states, can further normalize extending parole eligibility opportunities for youth for other states who have not yet done so.

Conclusions

The analysis of state juvenile justice reform in Connecticut, a liberal state, and Tennessee, which is conservative, reveal that there may be reasonable hope for gradual nationwide abolition of juvenile life without parole by the states and other important juvenile justice reforms, especially if the U.S. Supreme Court continues to undermine the Miller Trilogy precedents. Despite their differing political demographics and dynamics, both states adopted policies that are consistent with Miller’s progressive approach to the treatment of juveniles in the criminal justice system. Just as the Miller trilogy cases built upon one another, Connecticut’s Public Act No. 15- 84, S.B. 952, and Tennessee’s State of Tennessee v. Tyshon Booker built upon Miller vs. Alabama In each case, the modern scientific understanding of the developing adolescent brain factored into the decisions made by Connecticut and Tennessee. As mentioned in Chapter Two, in Jones v. Mississippi the U.S. Supreme Court retreated from this pattern by neglecting to raise the standards in juvenile sentencing cases. Nevertheless, even in State of Tennessee v. Tyshon Booker (2022) which occurred a full year after the Jones decision was released, the retrogressive Jones ruling did not control the Tennessee Supreme Court’s holding. Despite the differing ideological perspectives that drive policy making in Connecticut and Tennessee, their policy choices outcomes for JLWOP reform share much in common. Moreover, as noted earlier, each state utilized a specific branch of government to achieve reform, the legislature in Connecticut, and the courts in Tennessee. As a result, there are two good models available to policy makers in others states who seek to undertake reform of JLWOP and related matters. In fact, three states in 2024 have already banned juvenile life without parole already: Illinois,²²⁵ New Mexico,²²⁶ and Minnesota.²²⁷

In addition, some research suggests that state initiatives for juvenile justice reform also can also benefit from activist groups who lobby at the state level. As previously established, public opinion largely disapproves of juvenile life without parole.²²⁸ The Connecticut ACLU and Connecticut Voices for Children played a role in getting Connecticut to ratify Public Act No. 15- 84 and abolish juvenile life without parole, highlighting a benefit of legislative action in that the legislative process inherently encourages the input of public opinion. Though Tennessee has yet to ban JLWOP, in the oral argument hearing for The State of Tennessee v. Tyshon Booker (2022), the Court received an amicus brief from religious organizations in support of Booker’s arguments against the sentencing scheme for juveniles and referred to it in their questioning of Booker’s attorney.²²⁹ Local activist organizations or chapters of larger organizations that advocate for fair sentencing for juveniles have the advantage of tailoring their suggestions to the specific state and its identified areas for reform, rather than just imposing a broad policy change for the entire country, which would be likely to invite more controversy among the states.

Finally, their similar expansions of parole eligibility for youth in both Tennessee’s Supreme Court’s decision to apply Miller, Graham, and Roper to sentencing outside of juvenile life without parole, and Connecticut’s recent S.B. 952, which expands parole eligibility for those convicted of a crime before the age of twenty-one, are consistent with national polling statistics²³⁰ on these topics. This trend to expand parole eligibility, exemplified by these two states, may pave the way for gradual nationwide reform of harsh juvenile sentences such as juvenile life without parole, as more parole opportunities are being offered to children than were available in the past. Consequently, it may be possible to create a landscape more amenable to the abolition of juvenile life without parole than what currently exists on the United States Supreme Court. Finally, should they choose to do so, states have remarkable power in their hands to abolish the unreasonably harsh and outdated juvenile life without parole sentence through legislative and judicial means that are not exclusive to their location, histories, and current political demographics.

Chapter Six: Policy Proposals, Summary, and Conclusions

The new tide of legislative and judicial abolition and juvenile sentencing reform in the post-Miller era has been potent in counteracting the conservative degradation of the Miller Trilogy’s spirit of reform in the Jones v. Mississippi ruling. Given the effectiveness that JWLOP abolition and sentencing reform efforts have had in the states compared to the nearly complete lack of progress federally, a focus on state-by-state sentencing reform may be more effective than pursuing it on a national level. The reform recommendations that this chapter makes will be for a state-by-state approach that relies upon the application of both existing Supreme Court precedents and efforts to reduce recidivism and improve advocacy, are promising and manageable solutions for the states and activists in it to undertake.

Expanding Precedents

There are important similarities between public sentiment about the treatment of juveniles in the criminal justice system when the Supreme Court abolished the death penalty for juveniles in 2005 and the American public’s changing attitudes about JLWOP sentences at the present moment. When he represented Evan Miller in Miller v. Alabama in 2012, Attorney Bryan Stevenson suggested that a categorical ban on juvenile life without parole, one that would impose a substantial limitation on a state’s use of a life without parole sentence, would be “consistent with the Court’s understanding about child status and development.”²³¹ As mentioned in Chapter Two, the Supreme Court in Miller failed to create a complete categorical ban despite evolving public disapproval of the practice. Likewise, today polling indicates that the American public now also disapproves of juvenile life without parole due to the growing acceptance of scientific evidence that the psychological development of juvenile offenders sets them apart from adult offenders and therefore requires a sentencing system tailored to their needs.

As discussed previously in Chapter Two, the Supreme Court based its 2005 decision in Roper v. Simmons on three factors, namely, international acceptance of the death penalty for youth, the popularity of the death penalty for youth in the states, and scientific evidence pointing to an inherent disproportionality of punishment for the juvenile mind at that stage of adolescent development.²³² Addressing the first factor that influenced the Court’s decision to abolish the death penalty for children at the time Roper was decided, the United States was the only country in the entire world to impose that sentence on juveniles.²³³ In his majority opinion, justice Kennedy pointed out that, “Our determination that the death penalty is disproportionate punishment for offenders under 18 finds confirmation in the stark reality that the United States is the only country in the world that continues to give official sanction to the juvenile death penalty.” According to the Juvenile Law Center’s 2023 data, the United States is the only country in the world to allow the sentence of life without parole for juveniles.²³⁴ Given the significance of the precedent set by Roper, America’s unique imposition of JLWOP should also be considered when determining the unconstitutionality of the practice under the Eighth Amendment.

All three Miller cases have established the need to factor in the existence and direction of domestic policy when determining whether a punishment can be considered cruel and unusual. While most states did not abolish JLWOP sentences after the decisions in Graham or Miller in 2010 and 2012, a new, more promising trend has now emerged. In 2023, Illinois became the 26th state in the union to ban juvenile life without parole, and as of 2024, twenty-eight states have banned the sentence.²³⁵ News reports²³⁶ and legislative records²³⁷ confirm that the state of Michigan may soon become the twenty-ninth state to abolish juvenile life without parole. As a result, over half of the states in America have now banned juvenile life without parole sentences. In addition, five states still have the sentence as an option for children, but currently has no one serving it.²³⁸ The rapid reforms in just last twelve years that have taken place in these states that now ban or limit the application of juvenile life without parole actually outpace the rate of change that occurred following the Roper ruling that declared the death penalty sentence unconstitutional for children.

Lastly, the acceptance of the brain science around adolescent development has also expanded since the Miller decision. Just a year before Miller v. Alabama was argued and decided in 2012, the science regarding the point at which the maturation of the adolescent brain was complete was still considered “emerging” among professionals.²³⁹ However, in the decade that followed, neuropsychologists have largely come to the consensus that the brain, primarily the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that controls prompts logic and reason in decision making does not finish developing until the age of 25. Prior to that time, brains in juveniles rely heavily on the limbic system, a group of systems in the cerebrum of the brain governing intensity of emotions including fear, anger, and the fight or fight response.²⁴⁰ Only recently have the scientific and legal communities come to agree that juvenile culpability for criminal offenses is inherently different than for adults because juveniles cannot possess the same mens rea as adult offenders. Rather, it is substantially reduced and thus cannot completely meet the mental state required to convict a juvenile for a specific crime like homicide that requires intent. Moreover, the current scientific understanding of a child’s “diminished capacity,” recent studies providing evidence that rational decision making depends upon changes in the brain’s function and maturation alone,²⁴¹ and the increased credibility given to the accuracy of the age-crime curve, are consistent with the factors that influenced the Supreme Court’s decision in Roper.

More specifically, the Roper Court emphasized these qualities in juveniles: (1) a “lack of maturity and an underdeveloped sense of responsibility;” (2) a vulnerability and susceptibility to “negative influences and outside pressures, including peer pressure;” and fact that the character of juveniles is not fully formed and in fact “transitory.”²⁴² This assessment of juvenile psychological development identified in Roper should also be applied to children facing JLWOP sentences. Furthermore, these ideas are even more widely accepted now than they were by the scientific community than they were when Roper was decided. In Roper, Justice Kennedy, writing for the majority stated that “these differences render suspect any conclusion that a juvenile falls among the worst offenders.”²⁴³ He therefore made the determination that they could not be subject to the punishment of death that had been permitted by the states for the worst offenders. As in Roper, advocates of life without parole argue that the sentence is appropriate and necessary in order to keep dangerous youth offenders, whom they believe cannot be reformed, locked away from the public. Importantly, according to recent research in the last 5 years,²⁴⁴ these assumptions are erroneous. As Roper determined, once diminished culpability was established, the penological justifications for the punishments apply with lesser force than for adults.²⁴⁵ Finally, the Court’s precedent in the Miller Trilogy determined that “the characteristics of youth, and the way they weaken rationales for punishment, can render a life-without-parole sentence disproportionate.”²⁴⁶ In other words, theses precedents strengthen the arguments made by many juvenile reform advocates that JWLOP and similar sentences may be unconstitutional because they are cruel and unusual and therefore violate the Eighth Amendment.

Legal scholars and advocates have been increasingly reinforcing constitutional arguments against JLWOP sentencing practices. Scholarly research highlights new legal arguments about racial disparities that may further undermine the justifications for JLWOP sentences. For example, Savita Sivakumar wrote in the Dartmouth Law Journal that “studies have conclusively found that black and Latinx youths are far more likely to be sentenced to JLWOP than their white counterparts.” Furthermore, “in every state where JWLOP is still used, the rate of JLWOP for Black youth is above that for white youth.”²⁴⁷ She goes on to argue that the disproportionate racial impact of JWLOP on Black youthful offenders may further violate the Eighth Amendment, citing important arguments about made in Furman v. Georgia (1972), which she acknowledges was reversed 1976. Sivakumar further contends that those disparate impact arguments remain compelling. She argues, “The current impact of JLWOP violates the second tenet of Justice Douglas' argument against the death penalty in Furman v. Georgia because without fair reason, the State ‘inflicts upon some people a severe punishment that it does not inflict upon others.’”²⁴⁸ While currently, it is not likely that the Supreme Court will accept these arguments, state courts and legislatures may find this line of thinking helpful as they seek to advance JLWOP sentencing reforms.

Additionally, scholars have advocated for the application of other Supreme Court standards to JWLOP cases under the Sixth Amendment that could prove particularly manageable for states to incorporate so as to protect youth’s rights. For example, Margaret Helein, writing in The American University Law Review, argues that “the same standards for investigation into and presentation of mitigation evidence at sentencing in capital proceedings must govern JLWOP proceedings. This is the only option that comports with the requirements of the Sixth and Eighth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.”²⁴⁹ Doing so will ensure a clear standard in JLWOP sentencing proceedings nationwide to further mitigate against violation of these defendants’ constitutional rights under the Sixth Amendment.

The Sixth Amendment mandates a “right to counsel,”²⁵⁰ something that would be reinforced and more clearly defined by the case of Strickland v. Washington (1984) in which the Supreme Court laid out the “Strickland standard.” The Strickland standard is defined as a twopronged test, the first prong being that the defendant has to prove that “counsel’s performance” was deficient and in order to do so, “must show that counsel's representation fell below an objective standard of reasonableness.”²⁵¹ The court added that this “objective standard of reasonableness” would be defined by professional standards and guidelines,²⁵² which Helein points out, include the American Bar Association’s Defense Standards. For example, the court noted that “counsel has a duty to make reasonable investigations,” and if they do not there must be a reasonable explanation for it.²⁵³ The second prong requires that the defendant “must show that there is a reasonable probability that, but for counsel's unprofessional errors, the result of the proceeding would have been different.”²⁵⁴ Should both prongs be provable in a case, a defendant has the grounds to pursue an IAC (ineffective assistance of counsel) claim on appeal. If accepted by the appellate judge, the judge may order a new trial.²⁵⁵

The presentation of mitigating evidence in cases with ineffective counsel has been a prevalent issue in the outcomes of JLWOP and other juvenile life sentencing cases,256 including in the case study of State of Tennessee v. Tyshon Booker discussed in Chapter Five. According to the oral argument, in his original trial, Mr. Booker was unable to present a medical report that detailed his PTSD, his background, and examples of psychological help that a professional examiner determined would help in rehabilitating him, all of which constitute mitigating factors, into evidence. ²⁵⁷ The presentation of mitigating evidence was also an issue in Jones v. Mississippi. ²⁵⁸ However, Helein argues that the promise of a possible Strickland standard application to juvenile sentencing cases was affirmed in the Court’s opinion in Jones. ²⁵⁹ In that case, the majority stated in a note that “…the defendant may have a potential ineffectiveassistance-of-counsel claim, not a Miller claim—just as defense counsel’s failure to raise relevant mitigating circumstances in a death penalty sentencing proceeding can constitute a potential ineffective-assistance-of-counsel problem”²⁶⁰

Presently, the Strickland standard does apply to capital punishment cases, and as this thesis argues, and as Helein notes in her law review Comment, the Supreme Court has already likened JWLOP sentences to capital punishment for youth, and affirmed the potential application of Strickland standards to juvenile life sentencing.²⁶¹ The adoption of Strickland standards in JWLOP sentencing by state and district courts for those youth who face JWLOP sentences extends the protections they have. Furthermore, it may even improve fair sentencing outcomes by opening the door up for them to make more uniform and precise IAC claims, as retrials have the potential to result in a new verdict, or even an acquittal. ²⁶²

Policy Recommendations

For a state-by-state approach to reform, states should benefit from a diverse selection of solutions rather than relying upon legal reforms alone. This thesis has shown a direct correlation between the rhetoric surrounding youth outcomes in detention, and sentencing policies and practices in individual states. With belief in criminal youth and their capability for reform, such as that exhibited by the Miller Court, came policy reform across the states. One way of exhibiting a belief in these children is to implement and invest in re-entry programming and antirecidivism efforts. Life without parole sentences exist to keep those deemed incapable of reform from reentering society out of fear of re-offense. The creation of the superpredator myth in the 1990s resulted in states subjecting youthful offenders to life without parole sentences. Notably, these laws, and the fears of permanently incorrigible youth that cannot reform to live and work in society, still exist.²⁶³ However, advocates and researchers contend that present rates of recidivism are so high only because of a lack of effective reentry programming.²⁶⁴ Eliminating a fear of reoffense for juveniles, and capitalizing on what has been scientifically proven as a greater capacity for reform in youth,²⁶⁵ are factors that must be considered by policy makers in states seeking to ban the sentence of life without parole for juveniles.

There are many successful examples of re-entry programming and anti-recidivism efforts that many legal scholars, policy analysts, and social scientists have identified. Studies from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency have shown that the most successful reentry programs are specialized and tailored towards youth with components of individualized care and counseling. These studies confirm that those who received this care to be twice as less likely to recidivate as their counterparts not receiving this care.²⁶⁶ Successful re-entry and anti-recidivism programs can take many shapes and forms, and examples of them are not confined to states that are liberal leaning.

For example, the Prison Entrepreneurship Program or (PEP), which began in the Houston's Cleveland Correctional Facility in Texas, a red state. It has become one of the most successful prison reentry programs for adults adjusting to life outside of prison and seeking opportunity for work and stable job-retention.²⁶⁷ Through teaching them entrepreneurship skills with business professionals and facilitating a mandated “Business Plan Competition” which requires enrolled incarcerates to create their own business plans to use post-release,²⁶⁸ the PEP has achieved a 7% recidivism rate.²⁶⁹ Additionally, 100% of graduates receive employment in the 90 days after they are released, and 100% of them retain that employment for at least twelve months, with the national unemployment rate average for prisoners being 50%.²⁷⁰ This program is one that demonstrates the effectiveness of re-entry programs with a focus on successful reintegration into the present economy and combatting the causes for unemployment that are most commonly faced by those newly released from prison. Similar programs would be particularly beneficial to individuals incarcerated as juveniles because this population has had less time to build beneficial work habits than their adult counterparts and may require additional support in building work skills and in creating possible job opportunities for themselves.

Youth-specific reentry programs have also found success through building educational and occupational readiness skills. The Urban Youth Reentry Program, a program of the Urban League which presently operates in New Jersey, Georgia, Connecticut, Oklahoma, and Louisiana is one such program. The Urban Youth Reentry Program or, UYRP, includes a core program which includes “four-week career readiness programming, occupational skills training, case management, educational interventions and support, legal and other supportive services, and work-based learning,”²⁷¹ all of which have been proven effective in reentry programming.²⁷² Additionally, the services are inclusive of youth up to the age of 24,²⁷³ an age range consistent with our modern scientific understanding of the developmental ceiling for adolescent brain growth.²⁷⁴ Though a relatively new program, founded only in 2020, UYRP has seen promising results for youth who are newly released from prison. Two-thirds of youth in the program entered employment, and 98% of youth involved did not return to prison after their release,²⁷⁵ which is evidence of the success that youth-specific programming can have on their outcomes postrelease. With continued success, this re-entry program may serve as a valuable blueprint and reference for other states and jurisdictions seeking to reform their reentry and anti-recidivism programming for youth.

Funding for programs of this kind can be obtained via grants from federal agencies and funding from Congressional acts. For example, The Second Chance Act, ratified by Congress in 2008 allocates funding to allow state, local, tribal governments, and nonprofit organizations to succeed in their work to reduce recidivism.²⁷⁶ Federal agencies, such as the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency, an office of the United States Department of Justice assist in the distribution of these funds through their Second Chance Act Youth Reentry Program. In 2023 alone, the office awarded sixteen grants and provided reentry programs with $15,751,817 in financial aid.²⁷⁷ With access to this funding, all fifty states can receive support for any future efforts in reducing recidivism for juvenile offenders who have the capability of succeeding as is the case with the aforementioned programs in Texas and Connecticut.

Advocacy Recommendations

Based on commonalities between the successes of case-study states Connecticut and Tennessee, and on additional research, one particularly successful channel to change the opinions of state legislatures and courts to embrace limits on sentencing for children appears to be public advocacy efforts driven by criminal law reform organizations. In the example provided by Connecticut’s passage of Public Act No. 15-84, the Connecticut ACLU and Connecticut Voices for Children played a pivotal role in informing that decision. Additionally, religious organizations, and activist organizations such as the Juvenile Law Center filed amicus briefs²⁷⁸ that were considered by the judges who decided the case of the State of Tennessee v. Tyshon Booker (2022). These organizations possess the ability to utilize their institutional credibility and knowledge of additional scientific evidence to inform policy makers in the lawmaking processes in their respective states.

Studies have shown that decision-making by policymakers may be limited by “bounded rationality,” the fact that they do not have the ability to gather and consider all evidence relevant to the policy problems at hand.²⁷⁹ This prompts them to either pursue goals prioritizing certain information or act on gut feelings or existing beliefs to resolve the issue quickly.²⁸⁰ Those who have performed extensive research on the role of scientific evidence on policymaking argue that the best approach to combat this lies in “reducing ambiguity, to persuade policymakers to frame a problem primarily in one particular way and, therefore, to demand scientific evidence to help solve that problem.”²⁸¹ Moreover, it is recommended that those attempting to influence policy with scientific evidence utilize “persuasion” or “framing” strategies through

telling simple and easily understood stories which manipulate people’s biases, apportioning praise and blame and highlighting the moral and political value of solutions; and recognizing the importance of interpreting new scientific evidence through the lens of the beliefs and knowledge of influential actors.²⁸²

Criminal reform organizations such as The Equal Justice Initiative, The ACLU, Juvenile Law Center, Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth, and The Sentencing Project are all situated in an optimal position to capitalize on these methods to influence state lawmakers and judges regarding the data collected about youth and sentencing because of the local community connections that they have. For example, several of these named organizations participate in representing juveniles who have been unfairly treated by the criminal justice system and can provide narratives that incorporate the evidence that they use in their advocacy.

As noted earlier in this thesis, public opinion already does not support sentencing juveniles to die in prison,²⁸³ and advocates are uniquely equipped in our federalist system to leverage their power of the vote to influence their state and local politicians. Research on this topic conducted in 2003 by Paul Burnstein has shown that three-quarters of the time when its impact is gauged, public opinion has shown to influence policy.²⁸⁴ Additionally, approximately 33% of the time, this impact is of substantial policy importance, and estimated to be a fair bit more.²⁸⁵ Findings also seem to suggest that the impact of public opinion on policy “remains substantial when the activities of interest organizations, political parties, and elites are taken into account.”²⁸⁶ Therefore, it is crucial that these organizations advocating for criminal law reform focus their efforts not only on state legislatures and judiciaries, but also on public education. Overall, increasing public education and adopting the approaches of advocacy campaigns utilized by criminal justice reform organizations could have an even broader impact on the agendas of lawmakers and judges.

Summary and Conclusions

As the Supreme Court halted juvenile sentencing reform in their ruling in Jones v. Mississippi, it is the states that have taken up the juvenile sentencing reform effort in the progressive spirit of the Miller Trilogy. Currently, 28 states across the country, over half, have banned JLWOP.²⁸⁷ Abolition through legislative and judicial measures in the states following the Supreme Court’s recent inaction, shows no sign of stopping either, as the recent state reforms discussed earlier confirm. These state efforts aimed at improving the fair sentencing of youth seem to transcend political divides in a particularly divided nation. As discussed above, reforms in Connecticut and Tennessee provided insight into the specific reform paths that different states can take to achieve this reform. The Connecticut example highlights the effectiveness of a combined legislative and judicial effort, and Tennessee’s policy change demonstrates how reform can be achieved by judicial means when the legislature fails to act in accordance with public sentiment that supports reform. Notably, both states chose to preserve and implement the values and precedent set by the Supreme Court in the Miller Trilogy. Tennessee and Connecticut adopted the Roper, Graham, and Miller Court’s practices of embracing scientific evidence, prioritizing evidence of evolving standards of decency, and exhibiting a belief in a juvenile offender’s capacity to reform.

Tailored approaches are required for continued state-by-state reform across the states that have and have not abolished both JLWOP and mandatory life sentencing schemes. Given significance of judicial involvement and an adherence to the Miller Trilogy holdings discussed throughout the thesis, the expanded application of the Roper precedent and Strickland standards could fortify legal safeguards for youth facing homicide charges in adult court systems. In addition, as noted, activist groups in particular have already been effective catalysts to legislative and judicial reform in the states. Catering to their strengths, certain advocacy tactics to improve interactions with public officials and voters in the state are crucial for the success of activist campaigns against JLWOP and mandatory life sentences for children in the future. Yet, as previously discussed, these sentences prevail in the criminal justice systems of many states today because of the prevalence of the 1990’s superpredator myth, which characterized many juvenile offenders as incorrigible criminals who could not be reformed.²⁸⁸ The removal of these sentencing practices from the criminal codes of states across the U.S. would benefit enormously from the advancement of reentry programming for juveniles that reduce recidivism and improve their post-release outcomes.

The ideological rigidity of the current Supreme Court, dominated by movement conservatives, pumped the brakes on juvenile sentencing reform in Jones. Given their views on this question, it is highly unlikely that the Court will act to ameliorate the plight of youth defendants facing life sentences. However, continued widespread sentencing reform initiatives at the state level, combined with the legal policy suggestions discussed above could very well end extreme juvenile sentencing practices, and hopefully, foster a much-needed change in American legal culture to the benefit of our nation’s youth.

Introduction

This thesis examines the history of juvenile life without parole (JLWOP) sentencing in the United States and argues that the Miller Trilogy of Supreme Court cases set forth a clear direction for reform, recognizing the importance of scientific findings on adolescent brain development. It further argues that Jones v. Mississippi represents a deviation from precedent and a step back for the potential future of abolition of JLWOP. The thesis analyzes the Miller Trilogy cases, Jones v. Mississippi, and case studies of Connecticut and Tennessee to illustrate the states’ ongoing efforts to limit and abolish JLWOP sentencing, despite the Supreme Court’s conservative shift. Finally, the thesis provides policy recommendations for states, including expanding existing precedents, implementing reentry programming, and strengthening advocacy efforts, to promote a more just and effective system of juvenile justice.

From Atkins to the Miller Trilogy

The Miller Trilogy cases, which significantly limited the application of JLWOP, built upon precedent established in Atkins v. Virginia, where the Court found the death penalty for the mentally disabled unconstitutional. The Court in Atkins acknowledged evolving moral and legal standards and recognized the disproportionality of punishment for those with diminished capacity. These concepts, central to Atkins, reappeared in the Miller Trilogy, shaping the Court’s approach to juvenile sentencing.

Aktins, Diminished Capacity and Evolving Standards of Decency

Atkins v. Virginia (2002) established the significance of evolving standards of decency in Eighth Amendment jurisprudence, citing “the dignity of man” and the “progress of a maturing society.” The Court recognized the unique characteristics of the mentally disabled, including limitations in adaptive skills, impulsive behavior, and the tendency to be followers rather than leaders. This led to the concept of “diminished capacity,” whereby individuals cannot meet the mental state required for a specific intent crime. The Court's consideration of evolving standards of decency, alongside scientific evidence, set a precedent for the Miller Trilogy cases.

Miller Trilogy Oral Arguments

The oral arguments in the Miller Trilogy cases highlighted the crucial role of comparative criminal justice policy, domestic law and policy change, and scientific findings in shaping the definition of “cruel and unusual punishment” for juveniles. In Roper v. Simmons, the attorney for the respondent argued that the United States was the only country in the world that executed juveniles, emphasizing America's outlier status. The attorneys in all three cases also emphasized the importance of state legislation as an indicator of evolving standards of decency, highlighting a trend towards reducing severe punishments for juveniles. Finally, scientific evidence regarding the immature development of the adolescent brain was frequently cited to demonstrate the diminished culpability of juveniles and their potential for rehabilitation, supporting the argument that JLWOP and the death penalty were disproportionate punishments.

The Court’s Changing Jurisprudence from Miller to Jones

The Miller Trilogy Rulings

The Supreme Court’s rulings in the Miller Trilogy cases reflected a more progressive approach to juvenile sentencing, informed by evolving standards of decency and scientific evidence regarding adolescent brain development. The rulings reflected a consensus among the justices that youth matters in sentencing and that a sentence must be proportionate to the offender’s age and unique qualities. The Miller Trilogy’s holdings also incorporated evidence of the state’s changing criminal justice policies.

Jones v. Mississippi (2021) and the Downfall of the Miller Trilogy

In contrast to the Miller Trilogy, Jones v. Mississippi represented a significant departure from the Court’s previous approach to juvenile sentencing. The conservative majority rejected the arguments based on evolving standards of decency and scientific evidence that supported the Miller Trilogy rulings. The Court’s reasoning in Jones, focusing solely on the state’s arguments, disregarded the substantial progress made in state legislation and the scientific understanding of adolescent brain development.

State Responses to the Miller Trilogy and Jones: Case Study One

Connecticut

Connecticut exemplifies the effectiveness of state-led juvenile justice reform in the post-Miller era, having abolished JLWOP sentencing through legislative action. The state's decision to ban JLWOP reflects a combination of public sentiment, political dynamics, and the precedent set by the Miller Trilogy and Connecticut Supreme Court rulings.

State v. Riley

State v. Riley (2015) involved a juvenile offender sentenced to a lengthy term of imprisonment without parole. The Connecticut Supreme Court, drawing upon Miller v. Alabama and Graham v. Florida, determined that the state’s sentencing scheme was not consistent with the requirements of these landmark cases and required the trial court to consider the offender’s age and unique characteristics as mitigating factors. This ruling, consistent with the evolving standards of decency embraced by the Miller Trilogy, paved the way for legislative action to abolish JLWOP.

P.A. 15-84 and the Abolition of Juvenile Life Without Parole

Public Act No. 15-84, passed by the Connecticut legislature in 2015, abolished JLWOP in the state, aligning with the Miller Trilogy’s emphasis on the importance of scientific findings regarding adolescent brain development. The bill incorporated recommendations from state sentencing commissions, reflecting the changing attitudes of lawmakers and the public regarding the treatment of juvenile offenders. The successful passage of Public Act No. 15-84 demonstrates the potential for meaningful reform through legislative action.

Connecticut As A Model: What The Country Could Look Like Without JLWOP

Connecticut, having abolished JLWOP, has implemented a range of progressive criminal reform policies consistent with scientific findings on adolescent development, such as expanded parole eligibility for individuals who commit crimes before the age of 25. The state’s emphasis on reentry programming, including halfway houses and transitional housing, has led to a decrease in recidivism and demonstrates the value of investing in programs that facilitate rehabilitation and reintegration. Connecticut serves as a model for other states seeking to reform their juvenile justice systems.

State Responses to the Miller Trilogy and Jones: Case Study Two and Conclusions

Tennessee

Tennessee, a state with a history of imposing harsh penalties on juvenile offenders, has taken steps towards reform, demonstrating that even conservative states can embrace progressive changes. However, the state’s political landscape, dominated by the Republican party, has made legislative action challenging.

State v. Tyshon Booker (2022): Facts of the Initial Case:

State of Tennessee v. Tyshon Booker (2022) involved a juvenile offender sentenced to a mandatory life sentence for felony murder. The case presented the opportunity to challenge Tennessee’s sentencing scheme, which, unlike JLWOP, still allowed for the possibility of parole.

State of Tennessee v. Tyshon Booker (2022): Oral Arguments at the Tennessee Supreme Court

Booker’s attorneys argued that his mandatory life sentence violated the Eighth Amendment, relying on the Miller Trilogy cases and emphasizing the disproportionality of the sentence for a juvenile offender. They argued that Booker’s sentence denied him the chance for fulfillment, reconciliation, and reintegration into society, aligning with the Court’s reasoning in Graham v. Florida.

State of Tennessee v. Tyshon Booker (2022): Ruling

The Tennessee Supreme Court, drawing upon the Miller Trilogy and acknowledging the evolving standards of decency, ruled that Tennessee’s mandatory life sentence for juveniles violated the Eighth Amendment. The Court recognized that the sentence was disproportionate to the offender’s age and that it failed to provide for individualized sentencing, a requirement established in the Miller Trilogy. The Court’s ruling in Booker, while not abolishing JLWOP, suggests the possibility of expanding Eighth Amendment protections to include mandatory life sentences for juveniles and further demonstrates the potential for judicial reform in states where legislative action is difficult.

Potential Implications of the Booker Case for the Future of Lengthy Juvenile Sentences

The ruling in Booker, along with similar state-level reforms, might provide grounds for expanding Eighth Amendment protections for juveniles against lengthy sentences. The case demonstrates that the Court’s reasoning in Miller v. Alabama can be extended to mandatory life sentences, even if they offer a possibility of parole. This could pave the way for future challenges to sentencing schemes that fail to account for juvenile offenders’ diminished culpability and potential for rehabilitation.

Conclusions

The analysis of state juvenile justice reform in Connecticut and Tennessee provides compelling evidence that states, despite differing political dynamics, are capable of implementing significant reforms to their juvenile sentencing practices. The states, rather than the Supreme Court, are likely to lead the way in abolishing JLWOP sentences, utilizing both legislative and judicial means. The success of these reforms, reflecting the principles established in the Miller Trilogy, demonstrates the importance of embracing evolving standards of decency, scientific evidence, and a belief in the potential for rehabilitation among juvenile offenders.

Policy Proposals, Summary, and Conclusions

Expanding Precedents

The continued progress in state-level reforms, the increasing acceptance of scientific evidence regarding adolescent brain development, and the growing recognition of racial disparities in JLWOP sentencing provide compelling arguments for expanding existing legal precedents to protect juvenile offenders further. States should consider applying the Roper precedent, which abolished the death penalty for juveniles, to JLWOP sentencing, arguing that the United States is the only country in the world to allow this sentence for minors. Moreover, the Strickland standard, which ensures effective assistance of counsel, should be applied to JLWOP proceedings, ensuring that juvenile offenders have access to adequate legal representation and the opportunity to present mitigating evidence.

Policy Recommendations

To advance juvenile justice reform, states should implement comprehensive reentry programs that reduce recidivism and promote successful reintegration into society. This includes providing individualized care and counseling, vocational training, and job placement assistance. Federal funding through the Second Chance Act and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency can provide financial support for these programs.

Advocacy Recommendations

Criminal justice reform organizations should leverage their expertise and resources to advocate for policy changes at the state level. They should employ persuasion and framing strategies to educate policymakers and the public about the need for reform, highlighting the moral and political value of just and effective juvenile sentencing practices.

Summary and Conclusions

The Supreme Court's conservative shift, as evidenced by Jones v. Mississippi, has slowed the pace of juvenile justice reform at the federal level. However, state-led initiatives, fueled by a growing understanding of adolescent development and the disproportionate impact of harsh sentences on youth, have continued to make progress. The analysis of Connecticut and Tennessee reveals that both liberal and conservative states can implement meaningful reforms, demonstrating that JLWOP abolition and other reforms are not simply a matter of political ideology. By expanding legal precedents, investing in reentry programs, and strengthening advocacy efforts, states can continue to make progress in ensuring that juvenile offenders receive just and effective sentences that promote their rehabilitation and reintegration into society.

This thesis argues that the potential for a more humane and effective juvenile justice system in the United States lies in the continued efforts of states and advocates who are committed to challenging the outdated and unjust practices of JLWOP sentencing.

Introduction

Juvenile life without parole (JLWOP) in the United States has been challenged as unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. An examination of the legal history of JLWOP focuses on the Miller Trilogy of Supreme Court cases (Roper v. Simmons, Graham v. Florida, and Miller v. Alabama) which established important precedents for juvenile sentencing. The Supreme Court's recent decision in Jones v. Mississippi significantly narrowed the scope of the Miller Trilogy's protections for juveniles.

The Supreme Court's conservative shift has undermined the progress made in the Miller Trilogy, leaving the states as the primary drivers of reform. Case studies of Connecticut and Tennessee demonstrate how states can implement progressive juvenile sentencing policies, regardless of their political leanings.

Finally policy recommendations to promote further reform are discussed, focusing on expanding existing Supreme Court precedents, implementing reentry programming for juvenile offenders, and strengthening public advocacy efforts.

From Atkins to the Miller Trilogy

The Supreme Court case Atkins v. Virginia prohibited the death penalty for individuals with intellectual disabilities. This case established the importance of evolving standards of decency, proportionality of punishment, and scientific evidence in Eighth Amendment jurisprudence. These themes were repeated in the oral arguments presented in the Miller Trilogy, which used comparative criminal justice policy, domestic law and policy changes, and scientific findings to advocate against the death penalty and JLWOP sentences.

The Court’s Changing Jurisprudence from Miller to Jones

In the cases of the Miller Trilogy, the Court has relied on evolving standards of decency, scientific evidence, and proportionality of punishment to limit the application of JLWOP sentences. In contrast to the Miller Trilogy, Jones v. Mississippi, upheld a JLWOP sentence. The conservative shift on the Supreme Court has led to a retrogressive approach to juvenile sentencing, effectively undermining the protections established in the Miller Trilogy.

State Responses to the Miller Trilogy and Jones: Case Study One

Connecticut’s approach to juvenile sentencing reform highlights the state's successful implementation of a legislative ban on JLWOP sentences following the Supreme Court’s decision in Miller v. Alabama. In the Connecticut Supreme Court case State v. Riley, the Court established a more expansive interpretation of Miller, paving the way for legislative action. Connecticut also passed Public Act No. 15-84, which banned JLWOP sentences and demonstrated Connecticut’s commitment to progressive juvenile sentencing reform.

State Responses to the Miller Trilogy and Jones: Case Study Two and Conclusions

Tennessee’s approach to juvenile sentencing reform features the state’s successful judicial challenge to mandatory life sentences for juveniles in the case of State of Tennessee v. Tyshon Booker. The state has a history of harsh juvenile sentencing practices and challenges presented by its conservative political landscape. Despite Tennessee’s historical resistance to reform, the Supreme Court’s decision in Booker represents a significant step forward in recognizing the need for individualized sentencing and the consideration of mitigating factors in juvenile cases.

Policy Proposals, Summary, and Conclusions

Policy recommendations for further reform focus on expanding the application of existing Supreme Court precedents, including Roper and Strickland. It's important to implement comprehensive reentry programming for juvenile offenders to reduce recidivism. A renewed focus on public advocacy efforts is needed, emphasizing the crucial role of organizations like the ACLU and the Juvenile Law Center in shaping public opinion and influencing policy makers. A combination of state-level reforms, coupled with effective advocacy and reentry programs, can create a more just and equitable juvenile sentencing system in the United States.

Introduction

The United States is unusual in its use of life without parole for juvenile offenders (JLWOP). This practice is increasingly being challenged as a cruel and unusual punishment that violates the Eighth Amendment of the US Constitution. While the Miller Trilogy of cases (Roper v. Simmons, Graham v. Florida, and Miller v. Alabama) represented significant progress in protecting the rights of juvenile offenders, the Supreme Court’s decision in Jones v. Mississippi represents a step backward.

The future of JLWOP abolition lies in the actions of the states, as can be seen in case studies of Connecticut and Tennessee. Connecticut successfully banned JLWOP through legislation while Tennessee, through a court case, abolished mandatory life sentences for juveniles. States seeking to further reform their juvenile sentencing practices can invest in public education, advocacy, and effective reentry programs.

From Atkins to the Miller Trilogy

The Miller Trilogy of cases established a clear progression in juvenile sentencing, each building upon the legal reasoning of the previous cases. These cases recognized the important way in which social science can inform our understanding of "cruel and unusual punishment" as applied to juveniles, and arguments in these cases relied on the growing science of the adolescent brain and how it differs from an adult's.

The Miller Trilogy's rulings signify the important way in which science can inform our understanding of the meaning of cruel and unusual punishment as applied to juveniles. These cases relied on evidence of evolving standards of decency, comparative criminal justice policy, and scientific findings. In contrast, the Supreme Court's decision in Jones v. Mississippi, when JLWOP was upheld, ignored much of the evidence and reasoning from the Miller Trilogy, marking a retreat from the progress made in protecting juvenile offenders.

State Responses to the Miller Trilogy and Jones

Despite the Supreme Court's setback in Jones v. Mississippi states have continued to advance juvenile justice reform. Connecticut, for example, banned JLWOP through legislation, demonstrating the potential for progress through both legislative and judicial action.

Tennessee, a traditionally conservative state, offers another example of positive reform through its decision in State of Tennessee v. Tyshon Booker, which banned mandatory life sentences for juveniles. This decision, along with Connecticut's experience, illustrates that even states with conservative political leanings can adopt progressive juvenile justice policies.

Policy Proposals, Summary, and Conclusions

This chapter presents policy recommendations for states seeking to abolish JLWOP and reform their juvenile sentencing practices. The thesis emphasizes the importance of expanding precedent set by the Miller Trilogy, increasing public education, and developing effective reentry programs. It concludes that while the Supreme Court may be a barrier to progress on this issue, continued state-level reform holds the potential for significant change in the way our nation sentences its youth.

Introduction

JLWOP is a sentencing scheme that requires a life sentence for people under 18 years old. It's a punishment that's not used in any other country and is considered cruel and unusual by many people.

The thesis will show how the Supreme Court has changed its views on JLWOP in recent years, going from a more progressive approach to a more conservative one. It will also explore the efforts of states to reform their juvenile justice systems, which have been more successful than federal efforts.

The thesis will conclude with policy recommendations for eliminating JLWOP and improving juvenile justice in the United States.

Teenagers and JLWOP

Lots of people remember being a teenager as a time when they made some bad choices. But when a teenager does something wrong, it's important to remember that their brains aren't fully grown yet. This means they might not understand the consequences of their actions as well as adults do.

Imagine a teenager named James. James lives in a tough neighborhood and doesn't have a lot of opportunities. He sees other kids smoking and drinking and starts to do the same. He sees violence on TV and in video games, and he thinks he needs a gun to stay safe. One day, James goes for a ride with some friends and they start arguing. Someone reaches for a gun, and James’s friend tells him to shoot. James is scared and thinks he’s in danger, so he shoots the driver.

Because he’s charged with murder, James is tried as an adult. He’s found guilty and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. This means he’ll never be able to get out of jail, even though he was just a kid when he made a mistake.

James’s story isn’t real, but it’s based on a real teenager who faced a similar situation. It shows that sentencing teenagers to life in prison without the possibility of parole is unfair because their brains aren't fully developed.

The United States Constitution protects people from cruel and unusual punishment. Some people believe that JLWOP is cruel and unusual punishment because it’s so harsh for teenagers. While the Supreme Court hasn’t agreed with this yet, some states are starting to look at changing their laws about JLWOP.

The Definition of Juvenile Life Without Parole and Its Role in the U.S. Juvenile Justice System

JLWOP is when a teenager is sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. This means they can never get out of jail, no matter how much they change or how long they stay in prison.

Teenagers can be sentenced to JLWOP if they’re moved from juvenile court to adult court. Some people think this is a good idea because it might scare other teenagers from breaking the law. But some studies show that teenagers who are sent to adult court are actually more likely to break the law again later on.

By 2010, JLWOP sentences could only be given to teenagers found guilty of murder. However, teenagers who are sent to adult court can still get very long sentences, sometimes fifty years or more. These sentences are basically the same as life sentences for young people.

The Important Differences Between Adult and Juvenile Brains

The reason why teenagers might make bad choices is because their brains aren’t fully grown. The part of the brain that helps us make good decisions isn’t fully developed until we’re about 25 years old. This means that teenagers are more likely to act on impulse and not think about the consequences of their actions.

When teenagers get into trouble with the law, they often don’t understand the seriousness of their crimes. This is because their brains are still developing, and they’re not yet able to think like adults.

Because of these differences in brain development, some experts argue that teenagers shouldn’t be punished as severely as adults for the same crimes.

The History of Juvenile Justice Policy and Life Without Parole in the U.S.

For a long time, people thought that teenagers who committed serious crimes were dangerous and couldn’t be changed. This idea led to harsher punishments, including JLWOP sentences.

In the 1990s, some experts even said that a new type of teenager, called “superpredators,” was going to take over the country and cause a lot of crime. This made people very scared, and they wanted laws that were tougher on teenagers.

The idea of superpredators turned out to be wrong. But it did lead to changes in the law that made it easier to send teenagers to adult court and give them longer sentences, including JLWOP.

While the United States is the only country in the world that allows JLWOP sentences, things have been changing in recent years. Teenagers can no longer be sentenced to death, and JLWOP sentences are now only given for murder.

The Miller Trilogy Caselaw and Juvenile Life Without Parole

In the last few decades, the Supreme Court has made some important decisions about juvenile sentencing. These decisions, called the Miller Trilogy, changed the way that teenagers are punished in the United States.

The Miller Trilogy cases rely on two important parts of the United States Constitution: the Eighth Amendment and the Fourteenth Amendment.

The Eighth Amendment says that the government can’t give people cruel and unusual punishment. This means that the punishment must be fair for the crime committed. The Fourteenth Amendment says that the government can’t take away someone’s life, liberty, or property without giving them a fair trial. This is called “due process.”

The Miller Trilogy cases include:

• Roper v. Simmons (2005): This case said that it’s unconstitutional to give the death penalty to anyone who committed a crime before their 18th birthday.

• Graham v. Florida (2010): This case said that it’s unconstitutional to give a sentence of life without parole to a teenager who didn’t commit murder.

• Miller v. Alabama (2012): This case said that it’s unconstitutional to automatically give a sentence of life without parole to a teenager, even if they committed murder.

These cases were important because they showed that the Constitution protects teenagers from cruel and unusual punishments. They also showed that it’s important to consider a teenager’s age and brain development when deciding their punishment.

Fair Punishments for Young People

States can follow the brain science to make sure young people get a chance at fair sentences by working state by state to change JLWOP laws. Other things that can help are programs that support teenagers that have gotten in trouble with the law, to make sure they make better choices after they serve their sentences and don't end up back in prison.