The U.S. Supreme Court is once again turning its attention to mandatory life-without-parole sentences imposed on juveniles, raising the possibility for 84 Missouri offenders that the justice system will finally assess the length of their punishment in light of their youth at the time of their crimes.
The result could be reduced sentences for the offenders. That in turn could mean release from prison is just over the horizon for the oldest among the 84.
Just three years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in its groundbreaking Miller v. Alabama decision that laws that automatically sent juveniles convicted of homicide offenses to prison for life without the possibility of parole violated the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Instead, the U.S. Supreme Court declared, courts must weigh several factors, including the juvenile’s crime, home life and maturity, before sentencing the juvenile.
Now, the high court’s justices are tasked with resolving what to do about all of the juvenile offenders who were automatically sentenced to life without parole before the Miller decision.
Public defenders in Louisiana are asking the court to make Miller retroactive, meaning that any offender who received an automatic life-without-parole sentence as a juvenile would get the benefit of a resentencing hearing. The Obama administration is lending its support to this position.
While winning the case – Montgomery v. Louisiana – would undoubtedly represent a major legal victory for the juvenile offenders, the victory is far from a get-out-of-jail-free card. After weighing all the relevant factors, judges would still be allowed to sentence the offenders to life without parole.
But some sentences could be adjusted downward. For 69-year-old Henry Montgomery, the plaintiff in the case, who has lived more than 50 years behind bars, and offenders like him, reduced sentences could be satisfied by the decades of state-supervised aging that they have already logged.
The State of Louisiana, which won the case when it was before the Louisiana Supreme Court, is opposing the public defenders’ appeal.
Its argument, much like its opponent’s, delves deeply into the legalese of Eighth Amendment jurisprudence. The opening line of the state’s brief, however, frames its side of the issue in perfectly understandable terms: “Over fifty years ago petitioner Henry Montgomery shot deputy Charles Hurt to death, leaving Hurt’s wife and three young children to spend the rest of their lives without a husband or a father.”
Sixteen other states have sided with Louisiana, filing a brief of their own with the court.
Although Missouri is not among them, it too has opposed Miller’s retroactive application. A similar state-level case is now pending before the Missouri Supreme Court after the Missouri Court of Appeals found that Miller did in fact apply retroactively.
In that case – Branch v. Cassady – public defenders asked for a resentencing hearing for a juvenile automatically sentenced to life without parole. Like Montgomery, William Branch committed murder at age 17.
Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster, whose shiver-inducing tough-on-crime campaign commercials have persistently branded himself “all prosecutor, no politics,” led the state’s opposition to the resentencing.
Beyond Montgomery, Branch, and the other juvenile offenders’ individual hopes of regaining their liberty, though, the underlying practice and origins of juvenile life-without-parole sentencing merit further attention, according to Phillips Black, a legal organization that advocates for the rights of the incarcerated.
The organization hopes to see a high-court ruling that does away with juvenile life-without-parole sentences entirely – an outcome that John Mills, a Phillips Black attorney, concedes is unlikely in the Montgomery case.
As with so many other facets of the criminal justice system, juvenile life-without-parole sentences were systematically imposed in a nonsystematic way that disproportionately disfavored black- and brown-skinned Americans, according to statistics compiled by Phillips Black.
“State sentencing practices also show marked racial disparities,” the organization wrote in a recent report. From 1992 onward, “a black juvenile offender would be twice as likely to receive a [juvenile life-without-parole] sentence as his white counterpart.”
Phillips Black arrived at that conclusion by comparing the group of juveniles who were arrested for homicide offenses to the group of juveniles who actually received life without parole, Mills told The American.
Because juvenile life-without-parole sentences were mandatory for homicide offenses in so many places prior to the Miller decision, the disparity reflects the discretionary power prosecutors wield over charging decisions, Mills said.
While juvenile life-without-parole sentences have tapered off considerably across the country in recent years and especially after Miller, approximately 2,700 individuals remain imprisoned, Phillips Black reported in July.
“The overwhelming majority of [juvenile life-without-parole] sentences being served today were handed down during the 1990’s when a moral panic about violent youth led to a dramatic rise in harsh sentencing practices against juveniles, including expanding the use of [juvenile life without parole],” the organization explained.
Missouri is one of nine states whose prison systems house 82 percent of all offenders carrying out juvenile life-without-parole sentences, according to Phillips Black.
Additionally, the City of St. Louis is one of five county-level jurisdictions that together account for more than a fifth of all juvenile life-without-parole sentences.
Despite the long-shot odds of the Supreme Court ordering a complete prohibition on juvenile life-without-parole sentences in its Montgomery v. Louisiana ruling, Phillips Black recently touted a brief that asked the court to do just that. It calls them “death-in-prison sentences.”
Kevin Flannery is a St. Louis American editorial intern from Washington University School of Law.
