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From today's New York Times:

The Supreme Court on Monday ruled that its 2012 decision banning mandatory life-without-parole sentences for juvenile killers must be applied retroactively, granting a new chance at release for hundreds of inmates serving life sentences without the possibility of parole for murders they committed in their youth.

New York Times Story Here
 
Posts: 478 | Location: Parker County, Texas | Registered: March 22, 2002Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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Only took SCOTUS 22 months to catch up to TxCCA.

FYI, you can expect a bill to be filed next session (2017) that will eliminate auto life for capital cases involving offenders under 18 and replace it with a complicated, individualized sentencing scheme over a defined range of much less than life. It will also probably roll back parole eligibility for those offenders, too.
 
Posts: 2424 | Location: TDCAA | Registered: March 08, 2002Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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This part of Montgomery seems to approve of the holding by the CCA that an individualized sentencing hearing is not required so long as there is a possibility of review of the immaturity issues by a parole board later:

"A State may remedy a Miller violation by permitting juvenile homicide offenders to be considered for parole, rather than by resentencing them. See, e.g., Wyo. Stat. Ann. §6–10–301(c) (2013) (juvenile homicide offenders eligible for parole after 25 years). Allowing those offenders to be considered for parole ensures that juveniles whose crimes reflected only transient immaturity—and who have since matured—will not be forced to serve a disproportionate sentence in violation of the Eighth Amendment."

The Wyoming statute cited provides for an individualized sentencing hearing, but a mandatory sentencing procedure on the front end is not logically incompatible with the concept of "transient immaturity," especially when the court placed the burden on the defendant to show he was still capable of evolving from a troubled, misguided youthfulness.
 
Posts: 2386 | Registered: February 07, 2001Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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