WASHINGTON — In a case with origins in Arkansas, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday that a mandatory life sentence without possibility for parole for children who commit murder constitutes “cruel and unusual punishment” that is forbidden by the U.S. Constitution.
The court ruled 5-4 on the matter, with Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan, Anthony Kennedy and Sonia Sotomayor in the majority and Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas dissenting.
The court combined two cases that each involved a14-year-old who was found guilty of murder and, on the basis of state mandatory sentencing laws, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
The Arkansas case, Jackson v. Hobbs, involved Kuntrell Jackson, who is serving a life sentence at the Tucker Maximum Security Prison.
In 1999, when he was 14, Jackson, his cousin, Travis Booker, 14, and 15-year-old Derrick Shields robbed a video store in Blytheville. When the store’s clerk, Laurie Troup, didn’t immediately cooperate, Shields shot her in the face with a sawed-off shotgun, killing her.
Jackson was convicted on charges of capital felony murder and aggravated robbery.
The other case, Miller v. Alabama, involved Evan Miller of Lawrence County, Ala. In 2002, when he was 14, Miller and another minor stole $300 and some baseball cards from Miller’s neighbor Cole Cannon. When Cannon discovered them, they beat him with a baseball bat and set his trailer on fire, burning him to death.
Writing for the majority, Kagan argued that “youth matters” when deciding an appropriate punishment for a murder “because juveniles have diminished culpability and greater prospects for reform.”
In his dissent, Roberts argued that it is not within the court’s authority to roll back mandatory sentencing laws that state legislators have passed.
“In recent years, our society has moved toward requiring that the murderer, his age notwithstanding, be imprisoned for the remainder of his life,” he wrote. “Members of this Court may disagree with that choice. Perhaps science and policy suggest society should show greater mercy to young killers, giving them a greater chance to reform themselves at the risk that they will kill again. But that is not our decision to make.”
In the past decade, the Supreme Court has ruled in Roper v. Simmons and Graham v.Florida that the death penalty and life in prison without parole for children convicted of nonmurder crimes runs afoul of the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which bars cruel and unusual punishment.
After those decisions, in 2011, the Arkansas Supreme Court declined Jackson’s request to reopen his case, saying that as a homicide case that didn’t involve the death penalty, the recent high court decisions weren’t relevant.
Monday’s decision leaves open the possibility that children will be sentenced to life in prison for crimes they commit. But such decisions should be left to judges and juries, Kagan said.
Mandatory sentencing, she said, did not give them any discretion to consider whether a convict’s youth was a mitigating factor in determining the severity of the crime or the possibility the minor could be rehabilitated.
“Mandatory life without parole for a juvenile,” Kagan wrote, “precludes consideration of his chronological age and its hallmark features - among them, immaturity, impetuosity, and failure to appreciate risks and consequences.”
The ruling is “an important win for children,” said Bryan Stevenson, who argued the case on Jackson’s and Miller’s behalf.
“The court recognized that children need additional attention and protection in the criminal justice system, said Stevenson, who is executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, an Alabama-based organization that represents poor defendants and “prisoners who have been denied fair and just treatment in the legal system,” according to the group’s website.
Arkansas Assistant Attorney General Kent Holt argued the case for the state in front of the Supreme Court in March. Holt and Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel were not available for comment, a spokesman said.
“We respect the court’s decision in this matter, and we anticipate moving forward with proceedings consistent with the court’s opinion,” said Aaron Sadler, McDaniel’s spokesman.
Currently, there are 57 inmates in Arkansas serving life-without-parole sentences for murders they committed as juveniles.
In separate dissents, Roberts, Thomas and Alito wrote that the court’s decision usurps state legislatures’ ability to pass laws that reflect the wishes of the electorate. Twenty-nine states have passed mandatory life sentences for minors who are tried as adults and convicted of murder.
There are 2,000 people serving life in prison for murders they committed as minors, Roberts wrote, contrasted with the 123 serving life sentences for nonhomicide crimes in 2007. That year 380,480 minors committed such crimes, a fact the court considered in 2010 when it ruled that such a sentence was cruel and unusual given the fact that so few receive it.
The abundance of state mandatory sentencing laws reflects an attitude that a life sentence for murder was not cruel, Roberts said.
“The widespread and recent imposition of the sentence makes it implausible to characterize this sentencing practice as a collateral consequence of legislative ignorance,” Roberts wrote. “Nor do we display our usual respect for elected officials by asserting that legislators have accidentally required 2,000 teenagers to spend the rest of their lives in jail.” Breyer concurred with Kagan’s decision in a separate opinion that focused directly on Jackson’s involvement in the crime at the Blytheville video store.
Breyer wrote that if a minor is convicted of murder but did not “kill or intend to kill” the victim, his guilt is “twice diminished” - by his age and by his lack of intention to kill.
In Jackson’s case, Breyer said, Jackson “simply went along with older boys to rob a video store.”
Booker, Jackson’s cousin, told police that after initially staying outside the store, Jackson entered and said, “We ain’t playin’,” before Shields shot Troupe.
Later, he testified that Jackson had said: “I thought you all was playing.’”
Breyer wrote that “transferring” a defendant’s intent to every person involved in a violent felony - not just the triggerman - is premised on the idea that everyone engaged in the crime understands the full consequences of the act, including the risk that the victim could be killed.
“Yet the ability to consider the full consequences of a course of action and to adjust one’s conduct accordingly is precisely what we know juveniles lack capacity to do effectively,” Breyer wrote.
In his dissent, Alito said Miller and Jackson were “carefully selected” because of the young age at which they committed their crimes.
“It is hard not to feel sympathy for a 14-year-old sentenced to life without the possibility of release,” he said. “But no one should be confused by the particulars of the two cases before us. The category of murderers that the Court delicately calls ‘children’ (murderers under the age of 18) consists overwhelmingly of young men who are fast approaching the age of adulthood. Evan Miller and Kuntrell Jackson are anomalies.”
In 2003, after he was sentenced, Jackson escaped from the Mississippi County Jail and returned the same day, before he was transferred to prison.
He was moved from the state prisons’ Cummins Unit to Tucker in 2007 because of poor behavior, according to Dina Tyler, spokesman for the Arkansas Department of Correction.
Jackson has violated the rules on occasion since then, Tyler said, and some of the violations have involved violence. His last infraction was in December.
“He’s had issues,” she said.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 06/26/2012