Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/11pdf/10-9646.pdf
Page Number: 21.0

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

17 

Opinion of the Court 

to  guarantee  eventual  freedom,”  but  must  provide  “some
meaningful opportunity to obtain release based on demon-
strated  maturity  and  rehabilitation”).  By  making  youth
(and  all  that  accompanies  it)  irrelevant  to  imposition  of 
that  harshest  prison  sentence,  such  a  scheme  poses  too 
great a risk of disproportionate punishment.  Because that 
holding  is  sufficient  to  decide  these  cases,  we  do  not  con-
sider  Jackson’s  and  Miller’s  alternative  argument  that 
the  Eighth  Amendment  requires  a  categorical  bar  on  life 
without  parole  for  juveniles,  or  at  least  for  those  14  and 
younger.  But  given  all  we  have  said  in  Roper,  Graham, 
and  this  decision  about  children’s  diminished  culpability 
and heightened capacity for change, we think appropriate 
occasions for sentencing juveniles to this harshest possible
penalty  will  be  uncommon.    That  is  especially  so  because 
of  the  great  difficulty  we  noted  in  Roper  and  Graham  of 
distinguishing  at  this  early  age  between  “the  juvenile  of- 
fender  whose  crime  reflects  unfortunate  yet  transient 
immaturity,  and  the  rare  juvenile  offender  whose  crime 
reflects  irreparable  corruption.”  Roper,  543  U. S.,  at  573; 
Graham, 560 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 17).  Although we do
not  foreclose  a  sentencer’s  ability  to  make  that  judgment 
in  homicide  cases,  we  require  it  to  take  into  account  how 
children  are  different,  and  how  those  differences  coun- 
sel  against  irrevocably  sentencing  them  to  a  lifetime  in
prison.8 
—————— 

8 Given  our  holding,  and  the  dissents’  competing  position,  we  see  a 
certain  irony  in  their  repeated  references  to  17-year-olds  who  have 
committed  the  “most  heinous”  offenses,  and  their  comparison  of  those
defendants to the 14-year-olds here.  See post, at 2 (opinion of ROBERTS, 
C. J.) (noting the “17-year old [who] is convicted of deliberately murder-
ing an innocent victim”); post, at 3 (“the most heinous murders”); post,
at  7  (“the  worst  types  of  murder”);  post,  at  5  (opinion  of  ALITO,  J.)
(warning the reader not to be “confused by the particulars” of these two
cases);  post,  at  1  (discussing  the  “171⁄2-year-old  who  sets  off  a  bomb  in 
a crowded mall”).  Our holding requires factfinders to attend to exactly
such  circumstances—to  take  into  account  the  differences  among  de-