Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/11pdf/10-9646.pdf
Page Number: 8

4 

MILLER v. ALABAMA 

Opinion of the Court 

fenses involving a juvenile.”  Id., at 5, ___ S. W. 3d, at ___. 
Two justices dissented.  They noted that Jackson was not
the  shooter  and  that  “any  evidence  of  intent  to  kill  was
severely  lacking.” 
Id.,  at  10,  ___  S. W.  3d,  at  ___ 
(Danielson,  J.,  dissenting).    And  they  argued  that  Jack-
son’s  mandatory  sentence  ran  afoul  of  Graham’s  admoni-
tion  that  “ ‘[a]n  offender’s  age  is  relevant  to  the  Eighth 
Amendment, and criminal procedure laws that fail to take
defendants’  youthfulness  into  account  at  all  would  be
flawed.’ ”  Id., at 10–11, ___ S. W. 3d, at ___ (quoting Gra-
ham, 560 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 25)).2 

B 
Like Jackson, petitioner Evan Miller was 14 years old at 
the time of his crime.  Miller had by then been in and out 
of foster care because his mother suffered from alcoholism 
and drug addiction and his stepfather abused him.  Miller, 
too,  regularly  used  drugs  and  alcohol;  and  he  had  at-
tempted suicide four times, the first when he was six years
old.  See  E.  J.  M.  v.  State,  928  So. 2d  1077,  1081  (Ala. 
Crim.  App.  2004)  (Cobb,  J.,  concurring  in  result);  App.  in 
No. 10–9646, pp. 26–28 (hereinafter Miller App.).

One  night  in  2003,  Miller  was  at  home  with  a  friend, 
Colby  Smith,  when  a  neighbor,  Cole  Cannon,  came  to
make  a  drug  deal  with  Miller’s  mother.    See  6  Record  in 
No. 10–9646, p. 1004.  The two boys followed Cannon back 
to  his  trailer,  where  all  three  smoked  marijuana  and 

—————— 

2 For  the  first  time  in  this  Court,  Arkansas  contends  that  Jackson’s 
sentence  was  not  mandatory.    On  its  view,  state  law  then  in  effect 
allowed the trial judge to suspend the life-without-parole sentence and
commit Jackson to the Department of Human Services for a “training-
school  program,”  at  the  end  of  which  he  could  be  placed  on  probation.
Brief  for  Respondent  in  No.  10–9647,  pp.  36–37  (hereinafter  Arkansas
Brief)  (citing  Ark.  Code  Ann.  §12–28–403(b)(2)  (1999)).    But  Arkansas 
never  raised  that  objection  in  the  state  courts,  and  they  treated  Jack-
son’s sentence as mandatory.  We abide by that interpretation of state 
law.  See, e.g., Mullaney v. Wilbur, 421 U. S. 684, 690–691 (1975).