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Page Number: 30.0

26 

MILLER v. ALABAMA 

Opinion of the Court 

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0915, at 3–4 (unpublished memorandum).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  sen-
tence;  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 trans-
fer  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