COURT REVISITS LIFE SENTENCES FOR TEENS

WASHINGTON

Over the last 15 years, the Supreme Court, led by Justice Anthony Kennedy, methodically put limits on the availability of the harshest penalties for crimes committed by juveniles, first by striking down the juvenile death penalty and then by restricting sentences of life without the possibility of parole.

But Kennedy retired in 2018, and an argument on Tuesday suggested that the court, now dominated by six conservative members, has become less receptive to the project and its premises — that teenagers are less culpable than adults because of their immaturity, susceptibility to peer pressure and capacity for change.

The question for the court was whether the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment requires judges to determine that juvenile offenders are incorrigible before sentencing them to die in prison.

Justice Samuel Alito said the court’s precedents had gone far beyond what the Constitution required.

The case, Jones v. Mississippi, No. 18-1259, concerns Brett Jones, who had recently turned 15 in 2004 when his grandfather discovered his girlfriend in his room. The two men argued and fought, and the youth, who had been making a sandwich, stabbed his grandfather eight times, killing him.

In 2005, Jones was convicted of murder and sentenced to life without the possibility of parole, which was then the mandatory penalty under state law.

In 2012, in Miller v. Alabama, the Supreme Court ruled that automatic life sentences for juvenile offenders — like the one imposed on Jones — violated the Eighth Amendment.

After the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Miller, the Mississippi Supreme Court granted Jones a new sentencing hearing. The trial judge resentenced Jones to life without parole without saying in so many words that he was incorrigible.