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SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
_________________
Nos. 10–9646 and 10–9647
_________________
EVAN MILLER, PETITIONER
10–9646
v.
ALABAMA
on writ of certiorari to the court of criminal
appeals of alabama
KUNTRELL JACKSON, PETITIONER
10–9647
v.
RAY HOBBS, DIRECTOR, ARKANSAS
DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTION
on writ of certiorari to the supreme court of
arkansas
[June 25, 2012]
Justice Kagan delivered the opinion of the
Court.
The two 14-year-old offenders in these cases
were convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment without
the possibility of parole. In neither case did the sentencing
authority have any discretion to impose a different punishment.
State law mandated that each juvenile die in prison even if a judge
or jury would have thought that his youth and its attendant
characteristics, along with the nature of his crime, made a lesser
sentence (for example, life
with the possibility of parole)
more appropriate. Such a scheme prevents those meting out
punishment from considering a juvenile’s “lessened culpability” and
greater “capacity for change,”
Graham v.
Florida, 560
U. S. ___, ___ (2010) (slip op., at 17, 23), and runs afoul of
our cases’ requirement of individualized sentencing for defendants
facing the most serious penalties. We therefore hold that mandatory
life without parole for those under the age of 18 at the time of
their crimes violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on “cruel
and unusual punishments.”
I
A
In November 1999, petitioner Kuntrell Jackson,
then 14 years old, and two other boys decided to rob a video store.
En route to the store, Jackson learned that one of the boys,
Derrick Shields, was carrying a sawed-off shotgun in his coat
sleeve. Jackson decided to stay outside when the two other boys
entered the store. Inside, Shields pointed the gun at the store
clerk, Laurie Troup, and demanded that she “give up the money.”
Jackson v.
State, 359 Ark. 87, 89, 194 S.W.3d 757,
759 (2004) (internal quotation marks omitted). Troup refused. A few
moments later, Jackson went into the store to find Shields
continuing to demand money. At trial, the parties disputed whether
Jackson warned Troup that “[w]e ain’t playin’,” or instead told his
friends, “I thought you all was playin’.”
Id., at 91, 194
S. W. 3d, at 760 (internal quotation marks omitted). When
Troup threatened to call the police, Shields shot and killed her.
The three boys fled empty-handed. See
id., at 89–92, 194
S. W. 3d, at 758–760.
Arkansas law gives prosecutors discretion to
charge 14-year-olds as adults when they are alleged to have
committed certain serious offenses. See Ark. Code Ann.
§9–27–318(c)(2) (1998). The prosecutor here exercised that
authority by charging Jackson with capital felony murder and
aggravated robbery. Jackson moved to transfer the case to juvenile
court, but after considering the alleged facts of the crime, a
psychiatrist’s examination, and Jackson’s juvenile arrest history
(shoplifting and several incidents of car theft), the trial court
denied the motion, and an appellate court affirmed. See
Jackson v.
State, No. 02–535, 2003 WL 193412, *1
(Ark. App., dateJan. 29, 2003); §§9–27–318(d), (e). A jury later
convicted Jackson of both crimes. Noting that “in view of [the]
verdict, there’s only one possible punishment,” the judge sentenced
Jackson to life without parole. App. in No. 10–9647, p. 55
(hereinafter Jackson App.); see Ark. Code Ann. §5–4–104(b) (1997)
(“A defendant convicted of capital murder or treason shall be
sentenced to death or life imprisonment without parole”).[
1] Jackson did not challenge the
sentence on appeal, and the Arkansas Supreme Court affirmed the
convictions. See 359 Ark. 87, 194 S.W.3d 757.
Following
Roper v.
Simmons,
543 U.S.
551 (2005), in which this Court invalidated the death penalty
for all juvenile offenders under the age of 18, Jackson filed a
state petition for habeas corpus. He argued, based on
Roper’s reasoning, that a mandatory sentence of life without
parole for a 14-year-old also violates the Eighth Amendment. The
circuit court rejected that argument and granted the State’s motion
to dismiss. See Jackson App. 72–76. While that ruling was on
appeal, this Court held in
Graham v.
Florida that
life without parole violates the Eighth Amendment when imposed on
juvenile nonhomicide offenders. After the parties filed briefs
addressing that decision, the Arkansas Supreme Court affirmed the
dismissal of Jackson’s petition. See
Jackson v.
Norris, 2011 Ark. 49, ___ S. W. 3d ___. The majority
found that
Roper and
Graham were “narrowly tailored”
to their contexts: “death-penalty cases involving a juvenile and
life-imprisonment-without-parole cases for nonhomicide offenses
involving a juvenile.”
Id., at 5, ___ S. W. 3d, at ___.
Two justices dissented. They noted that Jackson was not the shooter
and that “any evidence of intent to kill was severely lacking.”
Id., at 10, ___ S. W. 3d, at ___ (Danielson, J.,
dissenting). And they argued that Jackson’s mandatory sentence ran
afoul of
Graham’s admonition that “ ‘[a]n offender’s
age is relevant to the Eighth Amendment, and criminal procedure
laws that fail to take defendants’ youthfulness into account at all
would be flawed.’ ”
Id., at 10–11, ___ S. W. 3d,
at ___ (quoting
Graham, 560 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at
25)).[
2]
B
Like Jackson, petitioner Evan Miller was 14
years old at the time of his crime. Miller had by then been in and
out of foster care because his mother suffered from alcoholism and
drug addiction and his stepfather abused him. Miller, too,
regularly used drugs and alcohol; and he had attempted suicide four
times, the first when he was six years old. See
E. J. M. v.
State, 928 So. 2d 1077,
1081
(Ala. Crim. App. 2004) (Cobb, J., concurring in result); App. in
No. 10–9646, pp. 26–28 (hereinafter Miller App.).
One night in 2003, Miller was at home with a
friend, Colby Smith, when a neighbor, Cole Cannon, came to make a
drug deal with Miller’s mother. See 6 Record in No. 10–9646, p.
1004. The two boys followed Cannon back to his trailer, where all
three smoked marijuana and played drinking games. When Cannon
passed out, Miller stole his wallet, splitting about $300 with
Smith. Miller then tried to put the wallet back in Cannon’s pocket,
but Cannon awoke and grabbed Miller by the throat. Smith hit Cannon
with a nearby baseball bat, and once released, Miller grabbed the
bat and repeatedly struck Cannon with it. Miller placed a sheet
over Cannon’s head, told him “ ‘I am God, I’ve come to take
your life,’ ” and delivered one more blow.
Miller v.
State, 63 So. 3d 676, 689 (Ala. Crim. App. 2010). The boys
then retreated to Miller’s trailer, but soon decided to return to
Cannon’s to cover up evidence of their crime. Once there, they lit
two fires. Cannon eventually died from his injuries and smoke
inhalation. See
id., at 683–685, 689.
Alabama law required that Miller initially be
charged as a juvenile, but allowed the District Attorney to seek
removal of the case to adult court. See Ala. Code §12–15–34 (1977).
The D. A. did so, and the juvenile court agreed to the
transfer after a hearing. Citing the nature of the crime, Miller’s
“mental maturity,” and his prior juvenile offenses (truancy and
“criminal mischief”), the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals
affirmed.
E. J. M. v.
State, No. CR–03–0915, pp. 5–7
(dateAug. 27, 2004) (unpublished memorandum).[
3] The State accordingly charged Miller as an
adult with murder in the course of arson. That crime (like capital
murder in Arkansas) carries a mandatory minimum punishment of life
without parole. See Ala. Code §§13A–5–40(9), 13A–6–2(c) (1982).
Relying in significant part on testimony from
Smith, who had pleaded to a lesser offense, a jury found Miller
guilty. He was therefore sentenced to life without the possibility
of parole. The Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed, ruling
that life without parole was “not overly harsh when compared to the
crime” and that the mandatory nature of the sentencing scheme was
permissible under the Eighth Amendment. 63 So. 3d, at 690; see
id., at 686–691. The Alabama Supreme Court denied
review.
We granted certiorari in both cases, see 565
U. S. ___ (2011) (No. 10–9646); 565 U. S. ___ (2011) (No.
10–9647), and now reverse.
II
The Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of cruel
and un- usual punishment “guarantees individuals the right not to
be subjected to excessive sanctions.”
Roper, 543 U. S.,
at 560. That right, we have explained, “flows from the basic
‘precept of justice that punishment for crime should be graduated
and proportioned’ ” to both the offender and the offense.
Ibid. (quoting
Weems v.
United States,
217 U.S.
349, 367 (1910)). As we noted the last time we consid- ered
life-without-parole sentences imposed on juveniles, “[t]he concept
of proportionality is central to the Eighth Amendment.”
Graham, 560 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 8). And we view
that concept less through a historical prism than according to
“ ‘the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of
a maturing society.’ ”
Estelle v.
Gamble,
429 U.S.
97, 102 (1976) (quoting
Trop v.
Dulles,
356 U.S.
86, 101 (1958) (plurality opinion)).
The cases before us implicate two strands of
precedent reflecting our concern with proportionate punishment. The
first has adopted categorical bans on sentencing practices based on
mismatches between the culpability of a class of offenders and the
severity of a penalty. See
Graham, 560 U. S., at ___
(slip op., at 9–10) (listing cases). So, for example, we have held
that imposing the death penalty for nonhomicide crimes against
individuals, or imposing it on mentally retarded defendants,
violates the Eighth Amendment. See
Kennedy v.
Louisiana,
554 U.S.
407 (2008);
Atkins v.
Virginia,
536 U.S.
304 (2002). Several of the cases in this group have specially
focused on juvenile offenders, because of their lesser culpability.
Thus,
Roper held that the Eighth Amendment bars capital
punishment for children, and
Graham concluded that the
Amendment also prohibits a sentence of life without the possibility
of parole for a child who committed a nonhomicide offense.
Graham further likened life without parole for juveniles to
the death penalty itself, thereby evoking a second line of our
precedents. In those cases, we have prohibited mandatory imposition
of capital punishment, requiring that sentencing authorities
consider the characteristics of a defendant and the details of his
offense before sentencing him to death. See
Woodson v.
North Carolina,
428 U.S.
280 (1976) (plurality opinion);
Lockett v.
Ohio,
438 U.S.
586 (1978). Here, the confluence of these two lines of
precedent leads to the conclusion that mandatory
life-without-parole sentences for juveniles violate the Eighth
Amendment.[
4]
To start with the first set of cases:
Roper and
Graham establish that children are
constitutionally different from adults for purposes of sentencing.
Because juveniles have diminished culpability and greater prospects
for reform, we explained, “they are less deserving of the most
severe punishments.”
Graham, 560 U. S., at ___ (slip
op., at 17). Those cases relied on three significant gaps between
juveniles and adults. First, children have a “ ‘lack of
maturity and an underdeveloped sense of responsibility,’ ”
leading to recklessness, impulsivity, and heedless risk-taking.
Roper, 543 U. S., at 569. Second, children “are more
vulner- able . . . to negative influences and outside
pressures,” including from their family and peers; they have
limited “contro[l] over their own environment” and lack the ability
to extricate themselves from horrific, crime-producing settings.
Ibid. And third, a child’s character is not as “well formed”
as an adult’s; his traits are “less fixed” and his actions less
likely to be “evidence of irretrievabl[e] deprav[ity].”
Id.,
at 570.
Our decisions rested not only on common sense—on
what “any parent knows”—but on science and social science as well.
Id., at 569. In
Roper, we cited studies showing that
“ ‘[o]nly a relatively small proportion of adolescents’ ”
who engage in illegal activity “ ‘develop entrenched patterns
of problem behavior.’ ”
Id., at 570 (quoting Steinberg
& Scott, Less Guilty by Reason of Adolescence: Developmental
Immaturity, Diminished Responsibility, and the Juvenile Death
Penalty, 58 Am. Psychologist 1009, 1014 (2003)). And in
Graham, we noted that “developments in psychology and brain
science continue to show fundamental differences between juvenile
and adult minds”—for example, in “parts of the brain involved in
behavior control.” 560 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at
17).[
5] We reasoned that those
findings—of transient rashness, proclivity for risk, and inability
to assess consequences—both lessened a child’s “moral culpability”
and enhanced the prospect that, as the years go by and neurological
development occurs, his “ ‘deficiencies will be
reformed.’ ”
Id., at ___ (slip op., at 18) (quoting
Roper, 543 U. S., at 570).
Roper and
Graham emphasized that
the distinctive at- tributes of youth diminish the penological
justifications for imposing the harshest sentences on juvenile
offenders, even when they commit terrible crimes. Because
“ ‘[t]he heart of the retribution rationale’ ” relates to
an offender’s blameworthiness, “ ‘the case for retribution is
not as strong with a minor as with an adult.’ ”
Graham,
560 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 20–21) (quoting
Tison
v.
Arizona,
481 U.S.
137, 149 (1987);
Roper, 543 U. S., at 571). Nor can
deterrence do the work in this context, because “ ‘the same
characteristics that render juveniles less culpable than
adults’ ”—their immaturity, recklessness, and impetuosity—make
them less likely to consider potential punishment.
Graham,
560 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 21) (quoting
Roper, 543
U. S., at 571). Similarly, incapacitation could not support
the life-without-parole sentence in
Graham: Deciding that a
“juvenile offender forever will be a danger to society” would
require “mak[ing] a judgment that [he] is incorrigible”—but
“ ‘incorrigibility is inconsistent with youth.’ ” 560
U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 22) (quoting
Workman v.
Commonwealth,
429 S.W.2d 374, 378 (Ky. App. 1968)). And for the same reason,
rehabilitation could not justify that sentence. Life without parole
“forswears altogether the rehabilitative ideal.”
Graham, 560
U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 23). It reflects “an irrevocable
judgment about [an offender’s] value and place in society,” at odds
with a child’s capacity for change.
Ibid.
Graham concluded from this analysis that
life-without-parole sentences, like capital punishment, may violate
the Eighth Amendment when imposed on children. To be sure,
Graham’s flat ban on life without parole applied only to
nonhomicide crimes, and the Court took care to distinguish those
offenses from murder, based on both moral culpability and
consequential harm. See
id., at ___ (slip op., at 18). But
none of what it said about children—about their distinctive (and
transitory) mental traits and en- vironmental vulnerabilities—is
crime-specific. Those features are evident in the same way, and to
the same de- gree, when (as in both cases here) a botched robbery
turns into a killing. So
Graham’s reasoning implicates any
life-without-parole sentence imposed on a juvenile, even as its
categorical bar relates only to nonhomicide offenses.
Most fundamentally,
Graham insists that
youth matters in determining the appropriateness of a lifetime of
incarceration without the possibility of parole. In the
circumstances there, juvenile status precluded a
life-without-parole sentence, even though an adult could receive it
for a similar crime. 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. Cf.
id., at ___ (slip op., at 20–23)
(generally doubting the penological justifications for imposing
life without parole on juveniles). “An offender’s age,” we made
clear in
Graham, “is relevant to the Eighth Amendment,” and
so “criminal procedure laws that fail to take defendants’
youthfulness into account at all would be flawed.”
Id., at
___ (slip op., at 25)
. The Chief Justice, concurring in the
judgment, made a similar point. Al- though rejecting a categorical
bar on life-without-parole sentences for juveniles, he acknowledged
“
Roper’s conclusion that juveniles are typically less
culpable than adults,” and accordingly wrote that “an offender’s
juvenile status can play a central role” in considering a
sentence’s proportionality.
Id., at ___ (slip op., at 5–6);
see
id., at ___ (slip op., at 12) (Graham’s “youth is one
factor, among others, that should be considered in deciding whether
his punishment was unconstitutionally excessive”).[
6]
But the mandatory penalty schemes at issue here
prevent the sentencer from taking account of these central
considerations. By removing youth from the balance— by subjecting a
juvenile to the same life-without-parole sentence applicable to an
adult—these laws prohibit a sentencing authority from assessing
whether the law’s harshest term of imprisonment proportionately
punishes a juvenile offender. That contravenes
Graham’s (and
also
Roper’s) foundational principle: that imposition of a
State’s most severe penalties on juvenile offenders cannot proceed
as though they were not children.
And
Graham makes plain these mandatory
schemes’ defects in another way: by likening life-without-parole
sentences imposed on juveniles to the death penalty itself.
Life-without-parole terms, the Court wrote, “share some
characteristics with death sentences that are shared by no other
sentences.” 560 U. S.
, at ___ (slip op., at 19).
Imprisoning an offender until he dies alters the remainder of his
life “by a forfeiture that is irrevocable.”
Ibid. (citing
Solem v.
Helm,
463 U.S.
277, 300–301 (1983)). And this lengthiest possible
incarceration is an “especially harsh punishment for a juvenile,”
because he will almost inevitably serve “more years and a greater
percentage of his life in prison than an adult offender.”
Graham, 560 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 19–20). The
penalty when imposed on a teenager, as compared with an older
person, is therefore “the same . . . in name only.”
Id., at ___ (slip op., at 20). All of that suggested a
distinctive set of legal rules: In part because we viewed this
ultimate penalty for juveniles as akin to the death penalty, we
treated it similarly to that most severe punishment. We imposed a
categorical ban on the sentence’s use, in a way unprecedented for a
term of imprisonment. See
id., at ___ (slip op., at 9);
id., at ___ (Thomas, J., dissenting) (slip op., at 7) (“For
the first time in its history, the Court declares an entire class
of offenders immune from a noncapital sentence using the
categorical approach it previously reserved for death penalty cases
alone”). And the bar we adopted mirrored a proscription first
established in the death penalty context—that the punishment cannot
be imposed for any nonhomicide crimes against individuals. See
Kennedy,
554 U.S.
407;
Coker v.
Georgia,
433
U.S. 584 (1977).
That correspondence—
Graham’s
“[t]reat[ment] [of] juvenile life sentences as analogous to capital
punishment,” 560 U. S., at ___ (Roberts, C. J.,
concurring in judgment) (slip op., at 5)—makes relevant here a
second line of our precedents, demanding individualized sentencing
when imposing the death penalty. In
Woodson,
428 U.S.
280, we held that a statute mandating a death sentence for
first-degree murder violated the Eighth Amendment. We thought the
mandatory scheme flawed because it gave no significance to “the
character and record of the individual offender or the
circumstances” of the offense, and “exclud[ed] from consideration
. . . the possibility of compassionate or mitigating
factors.”
Id., at 304. Subsequent decisions have elaborated
on the requirement that capital defendants have an opportunity to
advance, and the judge or jury a chance to assess, any mitigating
factors, so that the death penalty is reserved only for the most
culpable defendants committing the most serious offenses. See,
e.g., Sumner v.
Shuman,
483 U.S.
66, 74–76 (1987);
Eddings v.
Oklahoma,
455 U.S.
104, 110–112 (1982);
Lockett, 438 U. S., at 597–609
(plurality opinion).
Of special pertinence here, we insisted in these
rulings that a sentencer have the ability to consider the
“mitigating qualities of youth.”
Johnson v.
Texas,
509 U.S.
350, 367 (1993). Everything we said in
Roper and
Graham about that stage of life also appears in these
decisions. As we observed, “youth is more than a chronological
fact.”
Eddings, 455 U. S., at 115. It is a time of
immaturity, ir- responsibility, “impetuousness[,] and
recklessness.”
Johnson, 509 U. S., at 368. It is a
moment and “condition of life when a person may be most susceptible
to influence and to psychological damage.”
Eddings, 455
U. S., at 115. And its “signature qualities” are all
“transient.”
Johnson, 509 U. S., at 368.
Eddings
is especially on point. There, a 16-year-old shot a police officer
point-blank and killed him. We invalidated his death sentence
because the judge did not consider evidence of his neglectful and
violent family background (including his mother’s drug abuse and
his father’s physical abuse) and his emotional disturbance. We
found that evidence “particularly relevant”—more so than it would
have been in the case of an adult offender. 455 U. S., at 115.
We held: “[J]ust as the chronological age of a minor is itself a
relevant mitigating factor of great weight, so must the background
and mental and emotional development of a youthful defendant be
duly considered” in assessing his culpability.
Id., at
116.
In light of
Graham’s reasoning, these
decisions too show the flaws of imposing mandatory
life-without-parole sentences on juvenile homicide offenders. 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. Under these
schemes, every juvenile will receive the same sentence as every
other—the 17-year-old and the 14-year-old, the shooter and the
accomplice, the child from a stable household and the child from a
chaotic and abusive one. And still worse, each juvenile (including
these two 14-year-olds) will receive the same sentence as the vast
majority of adults committing similar homicide offenses—but really,
as
Graham noted, a
greater sentence than those adults
will serve.[
7] In meting out
the death penalty, the elision of all these differences would be
strictly forbidden. And once again,
Graham indicates that a
similar rule should apply when a juvenile confronts a sentence of
life (and death) in prison.
So
Graham and
Roper and our
individualized sentencing cases alike teach that in imposing a
State’s harshest penalties, a sentencer misses too much if he
treats every child as an adult. To recap: Mandatory life without
parole for a juvenile precludes consideration of his chronological
age and its hallmark features—among them, immaturity, impetuosity,
and failure to appreciate risks and consequences. It prevents
taking into account the family and home environment that surrounds
him—and from which he cannot usually extricate himself—no matter
how bru- tal or dysfunctional. It neglects the circumstances of the
homicide offense, including the extent of his participation in the
conduct and the way familial and peer pressures may have affected
him. Indeed, it ignores that he might have been charged and
convicted of a lesser offense if not for incompetencies associated
with youth—for example, his inability to deal with police officers
or prosecutors (including on a plea agreement) or his incapacity to
assist his own attorneys. See,
e.g., Graham, 560 U. S.,
at ___ (slip op., at 27) (“[T]he features that distinguish
juveniles from adults also put them at a significant disadvantage
in criminal proceedings”);
J. D. B. v.
North
Carolina, 564 U. S. ___, ___ (2011) (slip op., at 5–6)
(discussing children’s responses to interrogation). And finally,
this mandatory punishment disregards the possibility of
rehabilitation even when the circumstances most suggest it.
Both cases before us illustrate the problem.
Take Jackson’s first. As noted earlier, Jackson did not fire the
bullet that killed Laurie Troup; nor did the State argue that he
intended her death. Jackson’s conviction was instead based on an
aiding-and-abetting theory; and the appellate court affirmed the
verdict only because the jury could have believed that when Jackson
entered the store, he warned Troup that “[w]e ain’t playin’,”
rather than told his friends that “I thought you all was playin’.”
See 359 Ark., at 90–92, 194 S. W. 3d, at 759–760;
supra, at 2. To be sure, Jackson learned on the way to the
video store that his friend Shields was carrying a gun, but his age
could well have affected his calculation of the risk that posed, as
well as his willingness to walk away at that point. All these
circumstances go to Jackson’s culpability for the offense. See
Graham, 560 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 18) (“[W]hen
compared to an adult murderer, a juvenile offender who did not kill
or intend to kill has a twice diminished moral culpability”). And
so too does Jackson’s family background and immersion in violence:
Both his mother and his grandmother had previously shot other
individuals. See Record in No. 10–9647, pp. 80–82. At the least, a
sentencer should look at such facts before depriving a 14-year-old
of any prospect of release from prison.
That is true also in Miller’s case. No one can
doubt that he and Smith committed a vicious murder. But they did it
when high on drugs and alcohol consumed with the adult victim. And
if ever a pathological background might have contributed to a
14-year-old’s commission of a crime, it is here. Miller’s
stepfather physically abused him; his alcoholic and drug-addicted
mother neglected him; he had been in and out of foster care as a
result; and he had tried to kill himself four times, the first when
he should have been in kindergarten. See 928 So. 2d, at 1081
(Cobb, J., concurring in result); Miller App. 26–28;
supra,
at 4. Nonetheless, Miller’s past criminal history was limited—two
instances of truancy and one of “second-degree criminal mischief.”
No. CR–03–0915, at 6 (unpublished memorandum). That Miller deserved
severe punishment for killing Cole Cannon is beyond question. But
once again, a sentencer needed to examine all these circumstances
before concluding that life without any possibility of parole was
the appropriate penalty.
We therefore hold that the Eighth Amendment
forbids a sentencing scheme that mandates life in prison without
possibility of parole for juvenile offenders. Cf.
Graham,
560 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 24) (“A State is not required
to guarantee eventual freedom,” but must provide “some meaningful
opportunity to obtain release based on demonstrated maturity and
rehabilitation”). By making youth (and all that accompanies it)
irrelevant to imposition of that harshest prison sentence, such a
scheme poses too great a risk of disproportionate punishment.
Because that holding is sufficient to decide these cases, we do not
consider Jackson’s and Miller’s alternative argument that the
Eighth Amendment requires a categorical bar on life without parole
for juveniles, or at least for those 14 and younger. But given all
we have said in
Roper,
Graham, and this decision
about children’s diminished culpability and heightened capacity for
change, we think appropriate occasions for sentencing juveniles to
this harshest possible penalty will be uncommon. That is especially
so because of the great difficulty we noted in
Roper and
Graham of distinguishing at this early age between “the
juvenile of- fender whose crime reflects unfortunate yet transient
immaturity, and the rare juvenile offender whose crime reflects
irreparable corruption.”
Roper, 543 U. S., at 573;
Graham, 560 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 17). Although
we do not foreclose a sentencer’s ability to make that judgment in
homicide cases, we require it to take into account how children are
different, and how those differences coun- sel against irrevocably
sentencing them to a lifetime in prison.[
8]
III
Alabama and Arkansas offer two kinds of
arguments against requiring individualized consideration before
sen- tencing a juvenile to life imprisonment without possi- bility
of parole. The States (along with the dissents) first contend that
the rule we adopt conflicts with aspects of our Eighth Amendment
caselaw. And they next assert that the rule is unnecessary because
individualized circumstances come into play in deciding whether to
try a juvenile offender as an adult. We think the States are wrong
on both counts.
A
The States (along with Justice Thomas) first
claim that
Harmelin v.
Michigan,
501 U.S.
957 (1991), precludes our holding. The defendant in
Harmelin was sentenced to a mandatory life-without-parole
term for possessing more than 650 grams of cocaine. The Court
upheld that pen- alty, reasoning that “a sentence which is not
otherwise cruel and unusual” does not “becom[e] so simply because
it is ‘mandatory.’ ”
Id., at 995. We recognized that a
different rule, requiring individualized sentencing, applied in the
death penalty context. But we refused to extend that command to
noncapital cases “because of the qualitative difference between
death and all other penalties.”
Ibid.; see
id., at
1006 (Kennedy, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment).
According to Alabama, invalidating the mandatory imposition of
life-without-parole terms on juveniles “would effectively overrule
Harmelin.” Brief for Respondent in No. 10–9646, p. 59
(hereinafter Alabama Brief); see Arkansas Brief 39.
We think that argument myopic.
Harmelin
had nothing to do with children and did not purport to apply its
holding to the sentencing of juvenile offenders. We have by now
held on multiple occasions that a sentencing rule permissible for
adults may not be so for children. Capital punishment, our
decisions hold, generally comports with the Eighth Amendment—except
it cannot be imposed on children. See
Roper,
543 U.S.
551;
Thompson,
487
U.S. 815. So too, life without parole is permissible for
nonhomicide offenses—except, once again, for children. See
Graham, 560 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 24). Nor are
these sentencing decisions an oddity in the law. To the contrary,
“ ‘[o]ur history is replete with laws and judicial recogni-
tion’ that children cannot be viewed simply as miniature adults.”
J. D. B., 564 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 10–11)
(quoting
Eddings, 455 U. S., at 115–116, citing
examples from criminal, property, contract, and tort law). So if
(as
Harmelin recognized) “death is different,” children are
different too. Indeed, it is the odd legal rule that does
not have some form of exception for children. In that
context, it is no surprise that the law relating to society’s
harshest punishments recognizes such a distinction. Cf.
Graham, 560 U. S., at ___ (Roberts, C. J.,
concurring in judgment) (slip op., at 7) (“Graham’s age places him
in a significantly different category from the defendan[t] in
. . .
Harmelin”). Our ruling thus neither
overrules nor undermines nor con- flicts with
Harmelin.
Alabama and Arkansas (along with The Chief Jus-
tice and Justice Alito) next contend that because many States
impose mandatory life-without-parole sentences on juveniles, we may
not hold the practice unconstitutional. In considering categorical
bars to the death penalty and life without parole, we ask as part
of the analysis whether “ ‘objective indicia of society’s
standards, as expressed in legislative enactments and state
practice,’ ” show a “national consensus” against a sentence
for a particular class of offenders.
Graham, 560 U. S.,
at ___ (slip op., at 10) (quoting
Roper, 543 U. S., at
563). By our count, 29 jurisdictions (28 States and the Federal
Government) make a life-without-parole term mandatory for some
juveniles convicted of murder in adult court.[
9] The States argue that this number precludes our
holding.
We do not agree; indeed, we think the States’
argument on this score
weaker than the one we rejected in
Graham. For starters, the cases here are different from the
typical one in which we have tallied legislative enactments. Our
decision does not categorically bar a penalty for a class of
offenders or type of crime—as, for example, we did in
Roper
or
Graham. Instead, it mandates only that a sentencer follow
a certain process—considering an offender’s youth and attendant
characteristics—before imposing a particular penalty. And in so
requiring, our decision flows straightforwardly from our
precedents: specifically, the principle of
Roper, Graham,
and our individualized sentencing cases that youth matters for
purposes of meting out the law’s most serious punishments. When
both of those circumstances have obtained in the past, we have not
scrutinized or relied in the same way on legislative enactments.
See,
e.g., Sumner v.
Shuman,
483 U.S.
66 (relying on
Woodson’s logic to prohibit the mandatory
death penalty for murderers already serving life without parole);
Lockett, 438 U. S., at 602–608 (plurality opinion)
(applying
Woodson to require that judges and juries consider
all mitigating evidence);
Eddings, 455 U. S., at
110–117 (similar). We see no difference here.
In any event, the “objective indicia” that the
States offer do not distinguish these cases from others holding
that a sentencing practice violates the Eighth Amendment. In
Graham, we prohibited life-without-parole terms for
juveniles committing nonhomicide offenses even though 39
jurisdictions permitted that sentence. See 560 U. S., at ___
(slip op., at 11). That is 10
more than impose life without
parole on juveniles on a mandatory basis.[
10] And in
Atkins,
Roper, and
Thompson, we similarly banned the death penalty in
circumstances in which “less than half” of the “States that
permit[ted] capital punishment (for whom the issue exist[ed])” had
previously chosen to do so.
Atkins, 536 U. S., at 342
(Scalia, J., dissenting) (emphasis deleted); see
id., at
313–315 (majority opinion);
Roper, 543 U. S., at
564–565;
Thompson, 487 U. S., at 826–827 (plurality
opinion). So we are breaking no new ground in these cases.[
11]
Graham and
Thompson provide
special guidance, because they considered the same kind of statutes
we do and explained why simply counting them would present a
distorted view. Most jurisdictions authorized the death penalty or
life without parole for juveniles only through the combination of
two independent statutory provisions. One allowed the transfer of
certain juvenile offenders to adult court, while another (often in
a far-removed part of the code) set out the penalties for any and
all individuals tried there. We reasoned that in those
circumstances, it was impossible to say whether a legislature had
endorsed a given penalty for children (or would do so if presented
with the choice). In
Thompson, we found that the statutes
“t[old] us that the States consider 15-year-olds to be old enough
to be tried in criminal court for serious crimes (or too old to be
dealt with effectively in juvenile court), but t[old] us nothing
about the judgment these States have made regarding the appropriate
punishment for such youthful offenders.” 487 U. S., at 826, n.
24 (plurality opinion) (emphasis deleted); see also
id., at
850 (O’Connor, J., concurring in judgment);
Roper, 543
U. S., at 596, n. (O’Connor, J., dissenting). And
Graham echoed that reasoning: Although the confluence of
state laws “ma[de] life without parole possible for some juvenile
nonhomicide offenders,” it did not “justify a judgment” that many
States actually “intended to subject such offenders” to those
sentences. 560 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 16).[
12]
All that is just as true here. Almost all
jurisdictions allow some juveniles to be tried in adult court for
some kinds of homicide. See Dept. of Justice, H. Snyder & M.
Sickmund, Juvenile Offenders and Victims: 2006 National Report
110–114 (hereinafter 2006 National Report). But most States do not
have separate penalty provisions for those juvenile offenders. Of
the 29 jurisdictions mandating life without parole for children,
more than half do so by virtue of generally applicable penalty
provisions, imposing the sentence without regard to age.[
13] And indeed, some of those States
set no minimum age for who may be transferred to adult court in the
first instance, thus applying life-without-parole mandates to
children of any age—be it 17 or 14 or 10 or 6.[
14] As in
Graham, we think that
“underscores that the statutory eligibility of a juvenile offender
for life without parole does not indicate that the penalty has been
endorsed through deliberate, express, and full legislative
consideration.” 560 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 16). That
Alabama and Arkansas can count to 29 by including these possibly
(or probably) inadvertent legislative outcomes does not preclude
our determination that mandatory life without parole for juveniles
violates the Eighth Amendment.
B
Nor does the presence of discretion in some
jurisdictions’ transfer statutes aid the States here. Alabama and
Arkansas initially ignore that many States use mandatory transfer
systems: A juvenile of a certain age who has committed a specified
offense will be tried in adult court, regardless of any
individualized circumstances. Of the 29 relevant jurisdictions,
about half place at least some juvenile homicide offenders in adult
court automatically, with no apparent opportunity to seek transfer
to juvenile court.[
15]
Moreover, several States at times lodge this decision exclusively
in the hands of prosecutors, again with no statutory mechanism for
judicial reevaluation.[
16]
And those “prosecutorial discretion laws are usually silent
regarding standards, protocols, or appropriate considerations for
decisionmaking.” Dept. of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and
Delinquency Prevention, P. Griffin, S. Addie, B. Adams, & K.
Firestine, Trying Juveniles as Adults: An Analysis of State
Transfer Laws and Reporting 5 (2011).
Even when States give transfer-stage discretion
to judges, it has limited utility. First, the decisionmaker
typically will have only partial information at this early,
pretrial stage about either the child or the circumstances of his
offense. Miller’s case provides an example. As noted earlier, see
n. 3,
supra, the juvenile court denied Miller’s request
for his own mental-health expert at the transfer hearing, and the
appeals court affirmed on the ground that Miller was not then
entitled to the protections and services he would receive at trial.
See No. CR–03–0915, at 3–4 (unpublished memorandum). But by then,
of course, the expert’s testimony could not change the sentence;
whatever she said in mitigation, the mandatory life-without-parole
prison term would kick in. The key mo- ment for the exercise of
discretion is the transfer—and as Miller’s case shows, the judge
often does not know then what she will learn, about the offender or
the offense, over the course of the proceedings.
Second and still more important, the question at
transfer hearings may differ dramatically from the issue at a
post-trial sentencing. Because many juvenile systems require that
the offender be released at a particular age or after a certain
number of years, transfer decisions often present a choice between
extremes: light punishment as a child or standard sentencing as an
adult (here, life without parole). In many States, for example, a
child convicted in juvenile court must be released from custody by
the age of 21. See,
e.g., Ala. Code §12–15–117(a) (Cum.
Supp. 2011); see generally 2006 National Report 103 (noting
limitations on the length of juvenile court sanctions).
Discretionary sentencing in adult court would provide different
options: There, a judge or jury could choose, rather than a
life-without-parole sentence, a lifetime prison term
with
the possibility of parole or a lengthy term of years. It is easy to
imagine a judge deciding that a minor deserves a (much) harsher
sentence than he would receive in juvenile court, while still not
thinking life-without-parole appropriate. For that reason, the
discretion available to a judge at the transfer stage cannot
substitute for discretion at post-trial sentencing in adult
court—and so cannot satisfy the Eighth Amendment.
IV
Graham,
Roper, and our
individualized sentencing decisions make clear that a judge or jury
must have the opportunity to consider mitigating circumstances
before imposing the harshest possible penalty for juveniles. By
requiring that all children convicted of homicide receive lifetime
incarceration without possibility of parole, regardless of their
age and age-related characteristics and the nature of their crimes,
the mandatory sentencing schemes before us violate this principle
of proportionality, and so the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and
unusual punishment. We accordingly reverse the judgments of the
Arkansas Supreme Court and Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals and
remand the cases for further proceedings not inconsistent with this
opinion.
It is so ordered.