Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/11pdf/10-9646.pdf
Page Number: 3.0

Cite as:  567 U. S. ____ (2012) 

3 

Syllabus 

cide  crimes,  nothing  that  Graham  said  about  children  is  crime-
specific.   Thus,  its  reasoning  implicates  any  life-without-parole  sen-
tence  for  a  juvenile,  even  as  its  categorical  bar  relates  only  to  non-
homicide  offenses.    Most  fundamentally,  Graham  insists  that  youth
matters in determining the appropriateness of a lifetime of incarcera-
tion  without  the  possibility  of  parole.    The  mandatory  penalty
schemes at issue here, however, prevent the sentencer from consider-
ing youth and from assessing whether the law’s harshest term of im-
prisonment  proportionately  punishes  a  juvenile  offender.    This  con-
travenes  Graham’s  (and  also  Roper’s)  foundational  principle:  that
imposition  of  a  State’s  most  severe  penalties  on  juvenile  offenders 
cannot proceed as though they were not children. 

Graham  also  likened  life-without-parole  sentences  for  juveniles  to
the death penalty.  That decision recognized that life-without-parole
sentences  “share  some  characteristics  with  death  sentences  that  are 
shared by no other sentences.”  560 U. S., at ___.  And it treated life 
without  parole  for  juveniles  like  this  Court’s  cases  treat  the  death
penalty, imposing a categorical bar on its imposition for nonhomicide 
offenses.  By  likening  life-without-parole  sentences  for  juveniles  to
the  death  penalty,  Graham  makes  relevant  this  Court’s  cases  de-
manding  individualized  sentencing  in  capital  cases.    In  particular,
those cases have emphasized that sentencers must be able to consid-
er the mitigating qualities of youth.  In light of Graham’s reasoning,
these  decisions  also  show  the  flaws  of  imposing  mandatory  life-
without-parole sentences on juvenile homicide offenders.  Pp. 6−17. 

(b) The counterarguments of Alabama and Arkansas are unpersua-

sive.  Pp. 18–27.

(1) The  States  first  contend  that  Harmelin  v.  Michigan,  501 
U. S.  957,  forecloses  a  holding  that  mandatory  life-without-parole 
sentences for juveniles violate the Eighth Amendment.  Harmelin de-
clined  to  extend  the  individualized  sentencing  requirement  to  non-
capital cases “because of the qualitative difference between death and
all other penalties.”  Id., at 1006 (KENNEDY, J., concurring in part and 
concurring in judgment).  But Harmelin had nothing to do with chil-
dren,  and  did  not  purport  to  apply  to  juvenile  offenders.    Indeed,  
since  Harmelin,  this  Court  has  held  on  multiple  occasions  that  sen-
tencing  practices  that  are  permissible  for  adults  may  not  be  so  for
children.  See Roper, 543 U. S. 551; Graham, 560 U. S ___. 

The States next contend that mandatory life-without-parole terms 
for  juveniles  cannot  be  unconstitutional  because  29  jurisdictions  im-
pose them on at least some children convicted of murder.  In consid-
ering  categorical  bars  to  the  death  penalty  and  life  without  parole, 
this  Court  asks  as  part  of  the  analysis  whether  legislative  enact-
ments  and  actual  sentencing  practices  show  a  national  consensus