Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/11pdf/10-9646.pdf
Page Number: 60.0

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

5 

ALITO, J., dissenting 

are  concerned  with  the  imposition  of  a  term  of  imprison­
ment  on  offenders  who  kill.    The  two  (carefully  selected)
cases  before  us  concern  very  young  defendants,  and  de­
spite  the  brutality  and  evident  depravity  exhibited  by  at 
least one of the petitioners, it is hard not to feel sympathy 
for a 14-year-old sentenced to life without the possibility of 
release.  But no one should be confused by the particulars
of the two cases before us.  The category of murderers that
the Court delicately calls “children” (murderers under the
age of 18) consists overwhelmingly of young men who are
fast  approaching  the  legal  age  of  adulthood.    Evan  Miller 
and  Kuntrell  Jackson  are  anomalies;  much  more  typical 
are murderers like Christopher Simmons, who committed 
a  brutal  thrill-killing  just  seven  months  shy  of  his  18th 
birthday.  Roper, 543 U. S., at 556. 

Seventeen-year-olds  commit  a  significant  number  of 

murders every year,1 and some of these crimes are incred­
ibly brutal.  Many of these murderers are at least as ma­
ture as the average 18-year-old.  See Thompson, 487 U. S., 
at 854 (O’Connor, J., concurring in judgment) (noting that
maturity may “vary widely among different individuals of 
the same age”).  Congress and the legislatures of 43 States
have  concluded  that  at  least  some  of  these  murderers 
should  be  sentenced  to  prison  without  parole,  and  28 
States and the Federal Government have decided that for 
some of these offenders life without parole should be man­
datory.  See Ante, at 20–21, and nn. 9–10.  The majority of
this Court now overrules these legislative judgments.2 

—————— 

1 Between  2002  and  2010,  17-year-olds  committed  an  average  com­
bined  total  of  424  murders  and  nonnegligent  homicides  per  year.  See 
Dept.  of  Justice,  Bureau  of  Justice  Statistics,  §4,  Arrests,  Age  of  per­
sons arrested (Table 4.7). 

2 As the Court noted in Mistretta v. United States, 488 U. S. 361, 366 
(1989), Congress passed the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 to eliminate
discretionary  sentencing  and  parole  because  it  concluded  that  these 
practices had led to gross abuses.  The Senate Report for the 1984 bill