Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/11pdf/10-9646.pdf
Page Number: 59.0

4 

MILLER v. ALABAMA 

ALITO, J., dissenting 

ing that the Eighth Amendment prohibits capital punish­
ment  for  the  brutal  rape  of  a  12-year-old  girl,  the  Court 
disregarded a nascent legislative trend in favor of permit-
ting  capital  punishment  for  this  narrowly  defined  and 
heinous  crime.  See  554  U. S.,  at  433  (explaining  that,
although  “the  total  number  of  States  to  have  made  child 
rape a capital offense . . . is six,” “[t]his is not an indication 
of  a  trend  or  change  in  direction  comparable  to  the  one
supported  by  data  in  Roper”).  The  Court  felt  no  need  to 
see  whether  this  trend  developed  further—perhaps  be­
cause true moral evolution can lead in only one direction. 
And  despite  the  argument  that  the  rape  of  a  young  child 
may  involve  greater  depravity  than  some  murders,  the
Court  proclaimed  that  homicide  is  categorically  different 
from  all  (or  maybe  almost  all)  other  offenses.    See  id., 
at  438  (stating  that  nonhomicide  crimes,  including  child 
rape, “may  be devastating in their harm . . . but in terms 
of  moral  depravity  and  of  the  injury  to  the  person  and 
to the public, they cannot be compared to murder in their 
severity  and  irrevocability”  (internal  quotation  marks
and  citation  omitted)).  As  the  Court  had  previously  put 
it,  “death  is  different.”  Ford,  supra,  at  411  (plurality 
opinion).

Two  years  after  Kennedy,  in  Graham  v.  Florida,  any 
pretense of heeding a legislative consensus was discarded. 
In  Graham,  federal  law  and  the  law  of  37  States  and  the 
District of Columbia permitted a minor to be sentenced to
life  imprisonment  without  parole  for  nonhomicide  crimes,
but  despite  this  unmistakable  evidence  of  a  national  con­
sensus,  the  Court  held  that  the  practice  violates  the 
Eighth  Amendment.    See  560  U. S.,  at  ___  (THOMAS,  J., 
dissenting) (slip op., at 1–3).  The Court, however, drew a 
distinction  between  minors  who  murder  and  minors  who 
commit  other  heinous  offenses,  so  at  least  in  that  sense 
the principle that death is different lived on. 

Today, that principle is entirely put to rest, for here we