Opinion ID: 2750426
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Does Miller apply retroactively?

Text: II. Does Miller apply to juveniles who received a nonmandatory sentence of life without parole? LAW/ANALYSIS The Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides, Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted. U.S. Const. amend. VIII.3 Although the earliest Eighth Amendment cases focused on the barbarous nature of a punishment, the jurisprudence evolved to encompass challenges to the proportionality of the sentence to the offense. Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153, 170–72 (1976). When considering whether a sentence is proportional, the Supreme Court has acknowledged that the scope of the Eighth Amendment is not static, but must draw its meaning from the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society. Trop v. Dulles, 356 U.S. 86, 101 (1958) (plurality opinion). 2 Our holding is moot with respect to Damian Inman, whose convictions and sentences were reversed on other grounds in State v. Inman, 409 S.C. 19, 760 S.E.2d 105 (2014), and Dondre Scott, whose convictions and sentences were reversed on other grounds in State v. Scott, 406 S.C. 108, 749 S.E.2d 160 (Ct. App. 2013). 3 The Eighth Amendment applies against the states by virtue of the Fourteenth Amendment. Robinson v. California, 370 U.S. 660, 666–67 (1962). In Miller, the United States Supreme Court confronted a challenge to the mandatory imposition of life without parole sentences on juveniles as violative of the Eighth Amendment's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishments. 132 S. Ct. at 2461. In considering this question, the Supreme Court analyzed two strands of precedent impacting the proportionality compelled by the Eighth Amendment. The first line of cases dealt with categorical bans on certain sentences based on the inability to reconcile the class of offenders and the severity of the penalty. In Roper v. Simmons, 543 U.S. 551 (2005), the Supreme Court invalidated the death penalty for all juvenile offenders. Thereafter, in Graham v. Florida, 560 U.S. 48 (2010), the Court held that life without parole violates the Eighth Amendment when imposed on juvenile nonhomicide offenders. The Miller Court noted that Graham equated life without parole sentences for juveniles to the death penalty, invoking a second line of cases that require sentencing authorities to consider the individual characteristics of a defendant and the details of his offense prior to imposing a sentence of death. 132 S. Ct. at 2463–64; see also Lockett v. Ohio, 438 U.S. 586, 604 (1978) (plurality opinion) (holding that in all but the rarest kind of capital case the sentencer must not be precluded from considering as a mitigating factor, any aspect of a defendant's character or record and any of the circumstances of the offense that the defendant proffers as a basis for a sentence less than death); Woodson v. North Carolina, 428 U.S. 280, 304 (1976) (requiring consideration of the character and record of the individual offender and the circumstances of the particular offense as a constitutionally indispensable part of the process of inflicting the penalty of death). The Court therefore held that the confluence of these two lines of precedent leads to the conclusion that mandatory life-withoutparole sentences for juveniles violates the Eighth Amendment. 132 S. Ct. at 2464. A sentencer must be allowed to consider that youth is more than a chronological fact, and carries with it immaturity, irresponsibility, impetuousness[,] and recklessness, factors as transient as youth itself. Id. at 2467 (alteration in original). Although a court may still sentence a juvenile to life without parole after an individualized hearing, the Court cautioned that given children's diminished culpability and heightened capacity for change the appropriate occasions for sentencing juveniles to this harshest possible penalty will be uncommon. Id. at 2469.