But at the time, the court did not say whether its ruling must apply retroactively to old cases, the issue that was resolved Monday.
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About 1,200 inmates in seven states may now qualify for parole hearings.
Now, even those who were convicted long ago must be considered for parole or given a new sentence.
While several states already had held that the decision was retroactive to past convictions, the Louisiana courts decided that Miller v. Alabama did not apply retroactively. All told, more than 2,000 inmates nationwide are serving life without parole for juvenile crimes, according to a legal brief filed previous year.
The 22-page majority opinion in Montgomery v. Louisiana was delivered Monday by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who was joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts and justices Stephen G. Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor. He was 17 years old at the time.
In the three years since the Court’s decision in Miller v. Alabama, nine states – Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Nevada, Texas, West Virginia, Wyoming and Vermont – have abolished JLWOP. The dissenters also said the Supreme Court lacked jurisdiction to overrule states such as Louisiana. “Permitting juvenile homicide offenders to be considered for parole” is sufficient, Kennedy noted.
A second trial also resulted in a conviction, but the jury did not vote for a death sentence.
As reported by PBS, the high court determined the harsh sentence violated juveniles’ rights as set forth in the Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution – which prohibits cruel and unusual punishments.
The Supreme Court ruled Monday that people sentenced to life in prison as juveniles should be able to petition for a review and possibly earn parole.
Writing in dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia said the majority had found a “devious way of eliminating life without parole for juvenile offenders”, which the Miller decision claimed not to eliminate for the worst offenders. “The court did not go far enough, still allowing the sentence in rare cases, but it recognized that it is almost impossible to be certain that any child is beyond redemption – and that the USA criminal justice system needs to change to reflect this fact”. Only those teenagers who show no remorse or regret, and who are patently unlikely to develop, should be given life sentences without parole opportunities. In five juvenile justice cases over the last decade, the court has consistently said developmental differences between children and adults should be reflected in their punishment.
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Kennedy said that Montgomery now claims, after 46 years in prison, to have evolved from a troubled, misguided youth into a model inmate. The Court expressly refused to say so in Miller.
