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Page Number: 16

12 

MILLER v. ALABAMA 

Opinion of the Court 

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).    Im-
prisoning 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  inevi-
tably 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 offend-
ers immune from a noncapital sentence using the categori-
cal 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 

[of]
juvenile  life  sentences  as  analogous  to  capital  punish-
ment,”  560  U. S.,  at  ___  (ROBERTS,  C. J.,  concurring  in 

“[t]reat[ment]