Jones v. Mississippi: Juvenile Life Without Parole Back at the Supreme Court

Jones v. Mississippi: Juvenile Life Without Parole Back at the Supreme Court

Legal Sidebari
Jones v. Mississippi: Juvenile Life Without
Parole Back at the Supreme Court
October 30, 2020
On November 3, 2020, the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral argument in Jones v. Mississippi, a
case concerning whether the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishments requires a
finding that a juvenile offender is permanently incorrigible before the juvenile may be sentenced to life in
prison without the possibility of parole. Last term, the Court heard argument in Mathena v. Malvo, which
also raised an Eighth Amendment chal enge to a juvenile life without parole sentence; however, as a
previous Legal Sidebar explained, the Court ultimately dismissed Malvo when a change in state law
rendered that case moot. Soon after dismissing Malvo, the Court granted certiorari in Jones. As discussed
further below, the legal issue presented in Jones is similar to the issue presented in Malvo, although the
Court itself has changed in the interim due to the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the
confirmation of Justice Amy Coney Barrett to fil her seat. This Legal Sidebar first surveys key Eighth
Amendment jurisprudence relevant to Jones before briefly presenting the background of the case and the
parties’ arguments before the Supreme Court. The Sidebar concludes by discussing possible outcomes in
Jones and their implications for Congress.
The Eighth Amendment
The Eighth Amendment, which applies to both the states and the federal government, provides:
“Excessive bail shal not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments
inflicted.” The Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishments limits the sanctions that may
be imposed as a result of a criminal conviction. As a procedural matter, criminal sentences are usual y
determined by a judge in separate proceedings following conviction, though some states al ow juries to
determine sentences. Federal and state law may create a range of possible penalties for a given offense
and provide guidance for sentencers determining what penalty to impose. Some criminal offenses carry
mandatory minimum penalties, which in some circumstances may include a mandatory life sentence
without the possibility of parole.
The Supreme Court has interpreted the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishments to
prohibit the use of certain forms of punishment categorical y, including drawing and quartering, “hard and
painful labor,” and revocation of the citizenship of a natural-born citizen. In addition, the Court has held
that certain punishments that are permissible in some circumstances are nonetheless unconstitutional as
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applied to particular classes of defendants. For example, the Supreme Court has held that the Eighth
Amendment prohibits imposing the death penalty on cognitively disabled defendants or on any defendant
who has committed a non-homicide crime against an individual person.
One class of offenders that has been the subject of considerable Eighth Amendment litigation is juvenile
offenders—a category that includes any criminal defendant who was under 18 years old at the time of the
offense, regardless of whether the defendant was tried as an adult. In the past decade and a half, the
Supreme Court has issued several opinions outlining constitutional limitations on punishing juvenile
offenders. First, in the 2005 case Roper v. Simmons, the Court held that juvenile offenders may not
constitutional y be sentenced to death. Five years later, in Graham v. Florida, the Supreme Court held that
juveniles may not be sentenced to life without parole for non-homicide offenses.
Two subsequent decisions, Mil er v. Alabama and Montgomery v. Louisiana, further refined the Court’s
constitutional jurisprudence with respect to sentencing juvenile offenders. In Mil er, the Supreme Court
struck down laws in two states that imposed mandatory sentences of life without parole for juveniles
convicted of certain homicide offenses. Justice Kagan, writing for a five-Justice majority, drew on “two
strands of precedent reflecting [the Court’s] concern with proportionate punishment.” The first line of
cases, embodied in decisions including Roper and Graham, “adopted categorical bans on sentencing
practices based on mismatches between the culpability of a class of offenders and the severity of a
penalty.” With respect to juvenile offenders, the Court explained, those cases held that the harshest
punishments were rarely or never warranted because of juveniles’ “lesser culpability.” The second line of
cases that Justice Kagan invoked required individualized consideration of “the characteristics of a
defendant and the details of his offense before sentencing him to death.” Justice Kagan cited two cases
from the 1970s, Woodson v. North Carolina and Lockett v. Ohio, in which the Court construed the Eighth
Amendment to forbid the mandatory imposition of capital punishment and to require courts to consider
mitigating factors before issuing a death sentence.
The Court’s opinion in Miller invoked both of the two foregoing lines of cases in holding that “the Eighth
Amendment forbids a sentencing scheme that mandates life in prison without the possibility of parole for
juvenile offenders” but al owed the possibility that such a sentence might be imposed in specific homicide
cases. Citing the first line of cases establishing that juvenile offenders as a class should be treated
differently, the Court required that the sentencer consider “how children are different, and how those
differences counsel against irrevocably sentencing them to a lifetime in prison.” And, referring to the
second line of cases requiring individualized consideration in sentencing, the Court stated that sentencers
should consider each juvenile offender’s chronological age and maturity level, his home environment, the
circumstances of the homicide offense, the ways in which the “incompetencies associated with youth”
may have hampered the juvenile’s criminal defense, and the possibility of rehabilitation. The Miller
majority further opined that “appropriate occasions for sentencing juveniles to this harshest possible
penalty wil be uncommon.”
In 2016, the Supreme Court decided Montgomery, the Court’s most recent case addressing the Eighth
Amendment’s application to juvenile offenders. The Court held that Miller’s prohibition on mandatory
sentences of life without parole for juvenile offenders applied retroactively to convictions that were final
before Miller was decided. Whether Mil er applied retroactively hinged on whether its holding was
substantive or procedural. The Supreme Court has held that new substantive rules of constitutional law
must have retroactive effect, while new procedural rules general y need not. Justice Kennedy, joined by
five other Justices, concluded that Miller announced a new substantive rule by “bar[ring] life without
parole … for al but the rarest of juvenile offenders, those whose crimes reflect permanent
incorrigibility.” The Court acknowledged that “Miller’s holding has a procedural component”: requiring a
sentencer “to consider a juvenile offender’s youth and attendant characteristics before determining that
life without parole is a proportionate sentence.” However, the Court stated that Mil er also created a
substantive change in the law, given that it interpreted the Eighth Amendment’s “[p]rotection against

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disproportionate punishment.” The majority opinion ruled that Miller did more than just change
sentencing procedures; “it established that the penological justifications for life without parole collapse in
light of ‘the distinctive attributes of youth.’” Thus, the Montgomery Court explained, “[e]ven if a court
considers a child’s age before sentencing him or her to a lifetime in prison, that sentence stil violates the
Eighth Amendment for a child whose crime reflects ‘unfortunate yet transient immaturity.’”
The Supreme Court was poised to consider the Eighth Amendment’s application to juvenile offenders
again during the October 2019 term in Mathena v. Malvo. In that case, Lee Boyd Malvo, the juvenile
defendant in the wel -known D.C. sniper attacks, chal enged life without parole sentences he received in
Virginia for his role in the shootings. Malvo argued that Miller and Montgomery require the sentencer to
actual y consider youth and its attendant characteristics before any juvenile can be sentenced to life
without parole and that a scheme merely granting the sentencer discretion to consider those factors was
not constitutional y sufficient. The Commonwealth of Virginia countered that Miller and Montgomery
apply only to mandatory life without parole sentences and that Malvo’s sentence was discretionary. After
the Supreme Court heard argument in the case, but before it issued a decision, Virginia Governor Ralph
Northam signed into law HB 35, which effectively abolished juvenile life without parole sentences in
Virginia. The parties in Malvo filed a stipulation of dismissal in light of HB 35, and on February 26, 2020,
the Supreme Court dismissed the case. Less than two weeks later, the Court granted certiorari in Jones v.
Mississippi.
Jones v. Mississippi
As recounted in his Supreme Court brief, Brett Jones was 15 years old when he stabbed his grandfather to
death during a fight. A jury rejected Jones’s claim of self-defense and found him guilty of murder. The
court imposed a then-mandatory sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
In 2013, the Mississippi Supreme Court granted Jones’s motion for post-conviction relief based on Miller
and remanded his case for resentencing. During resentencing proceedings, the State of Mississippi again
sought a sentence of life without parole. Jones argued that Miller precluded the court from imposing a
sentence of life without parole because nothing in the record supported a finding that his “offense reflects
irreparable corruption.” Jones testified on his own behalf and presented five other witnesses who spoke of
Jones’s history of abuse and neglect, his mental health struggles, and his rehabilitation in prison. The state
circuit court nonetheless resentenced Jones to life without parole. In doing so, the court did not find that
Jones was permanently incorrigible or otherwise explicitly consider his capacity for rehabilitation. The
court did, however, state that it had “considered each of the Miller factors” and discussed various
mitigating and aggravating factors including the circumstances of the crime, Jones’s home environment,
and his maturity level. Jones appealed, and the state appeals court affirmed, relying in relevant part on a
prior Mississippi case holding that “Miller did not require trial courts to make a finding of fact regarding a
child’s incorrigibility.” The Supreme Court of Mississippi granted review, but following oral argument,
dismissed the case. Jones then filed a petition for a writ of certiorari in the U.S. Supreme Court, which
was granted on March 9, 2020.
Before the U.S. Supreme Court, Jones argues that the Eighth Amendment, as interpreted in Miller and
Montgomery, “prohibits sentencing juvenile homicide offenders to life without parole unless they are
permanently incorrigible.” To comply with that prohibition, he contends, “[w]hen a juvenile homicide
offender asserts that he is not permanently incorrigible … a court must resolve the question of
corrigibility before it may impose a life-without-parole sentence.” While Jones grants that states have
discretion to choose the procedures they use to make such a finding and disclaims any “magic phrase”
that courts must recite, he asserts that the sentencer must, at a minimum, make an “evident ruling” on the
issue. Because the Mississippi courts did not rule that Jones was permanently incorrigible, Jones asks the
Supreme Court to remand his case for consideration of that question. In the alternative, Jones argues that

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the record shows he is not incorrigible and asks the Court to remand with an instruction that he is
ineligible for life without parole.
The State of Mississippi disputes Jones’s argument that Mil er and Montgomery require specific
consideration of incorrigibility before a juvenile may be sentenced to life without parole. The state argues
that Miller invalidated mandatory sentences of life without parole for juveniles but “looked to
discretionary life-without-parole sentencing schemes” like the one under which Jones was resentenced “as
a benchmark for what is constitutional.” The State further asserts that in relying on Montgomery, Jones
seems to be reading that case as “announc[ing] a new rule of constitutional law applicable to discretionary
sentencing regimes.” However, the State argues, Montgomery merely held that Miller applies
retroactively without expanding the scope of the right at issue, and Montgomery did not invalidate—or
even address—discretionary sentencing schemes. The State contends that the Eighth Amendment “does
not require a ‘finding’ of permanent incorrigibility,” but simply mandates “that sentencers consider youth
and its attendant characteristics before sentencing a juvenile to life without parole.” The State notes that
following the decision in Miller, Mississippi “eliminated mandatory life without parole for juveniles and
developed an individualized sentencing process for juvenile homicide offenders.” Because Jones received
such individualized review, the State argues that his resentencing proceedings satisfied the requirements
of Miller and Montgomery.
Numerous outside parties, including the federal government and a group of 16 states, have filed amicus
curiae (“friend of the court”) briefs in this case, and the federal government wil participate in oral
argument. The federal government, like Mississippi, argues that the Eighth Amendment does not require a
finding of incorrigibility before a juvenile can be sentenced to life without parole. The federal government
further contends that even if findings related to incorrigibility are required, the burden of proof properly
rests on a juvenile defendant to prove a mitigating circumstance of “transient immaturity” rather than on
the prosecution to prove incorrigibility.
Possible Outcomes and Considerations for Congress
As a general matter, it is often difficult to predict how the Supreme Court wil rule in a case, and the
recent changes in the composition of the Court create particular uncertainty around Jones. The Court’s
latest high-profile juvenile life without parole cases were closely divided: Justice Ginsburg joined a five-
justice majority in Miller and a six-justice majority in Montgomery. On October 26, 2020, the Senate
confirmed Justice Amy Coney Barrett to fil Justice Ginsburg’s seat. Justice Barrett’s prior jurisprudence
provides little guidance on how she might vote in Jones. Specifical y, while sitting on the U.S. Court of
Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, Justice Barrett participated in one Eighth Amendment case, which raised
legal issues entirely distinct from the question presented in Jones. In that case, Justice Barrett authored a
dissent arguing for a stringent standard for prisoners’ Eighth Amendment claims of excessive force.
Turning to the specific issues presented in Jones, there are several possible outcomes in this case. The
Supreme Court could side with Jones and rule that Miller and Montgomery categorical y ban the
imposition of life without parole on a juvenile who is not clearly found to be permanently incorrigible. If
the Court came to that conclusion, it might hold that Jones’s life without parole sentence violates the
Eighth Amendment because the court that resentenced Jones did not make findings related to
incorrigibility. In the alternative, the Supreme Court could accept Mississippi’s invitation to interpret
Miller and Montgomery more narrowly. For instance, the Court might hold that those cases require
general consideration of youth and its attendant characteristics before a juvenile may be sentenced to life
without parole but decline to impose any specific fact-finding requirements on courts conducting that
inquiry. The Court could also hold that the limits articulated in Miller and Montgomery apply only to
mandatory sentences, not to discretionary sentences such as Jones’s. In either of those circumstances, the
Court would be more likely to affirm Jones’s sentence.

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Even if the Supreme Court determines that Jones’s current sentence violates the Eighth Amendment,
Jones could stil spend the rest of his life in prison. A ruling that accepted Jones’s legal arguments would
not secure his immediate release. Most likely, it would simply require Mississippi to bring his sentence
into compliance with the Eighth Amendment, which could potential y be accomplished through a new
sentencing hearing. (While Jones asks the Supreme Court to instruct the Mississippi courts on remand
that he is ineligible for life without parole, it is unlikely that the Court would make such a fact-based
determination in the first instance, because appel ate courts general y do not engage in fact-finding, and
the Supreme Court normal y does not consider legal questions not addressed by the lower courts.) As an
alternative to new sentencing proceedings deciding whether Jones is permanently incorrigible, Mississippi
could al ow Jones to be considered for parole or could follow Virginia in making al juvenile offenders
eligible for parole. However, even if Jones became eligible for parole, the parole board could deny his
applications (as has happened with the petitioner in Montgomery).
Nonetheless, Jones v. Mississippi has broader national implications beyond Jones’s individual situation
that may be of interest to Congress. The case could affect prisoners across the country serving life without
parole for offenses committed while they were juveniles—a smal minority of inmates overal , but a
group that commentators estimate may number around a thousand or more. Moreover, federal law
currently al ows juvenile offenders to be sentenced to life without parole and, in fact, a smal number of
federal inmates are currently serving juvenile life without parole sentences. Following Montgomery, some
federal inmates who had received mandatory life without parole sentences for crimes committed as
juveniles sought resentencing. If the Court holds in Jones that Miller and Montgomery require explicit
consideration of whether a juvenile offender is permanently incorrigible, the ruling could al ow additional
federal inmates to seek resentencing.
Regardless of the outcome in Jones, Congress could pass legislation to alter juvenile life without parole
sentencing under federal law. (While Supreme Court decisions articulating substantive constitutional
rights bind the states as wel as the federal government, Congress lacks the constitutional authority to alter
state criminal law, which is traditional y considered an area of state and local concern.) Federal legislation
could not modify the constitutional limits articulated in Miller, Montgomery or any other applicable cases.
If the Supreme Court ruled in Jones that the Eighth Amendment requires a finding of incorrigibility
before sentencing a juvenile to life without parole, Congress could not alter that holding through
legislation. On the other hand, if the Court ruled that Jones’s sentence is constitutional, Congress could
nonetheless pass legislation requiring federal courts to make certain findings before imposing a juvenile
life without parole sentence or otherwise limiting the availability of such sentences under federal law.
Congress could also expand resentencing options for federal juvenile offenders serving life without parole
sentences. As an example, the Next Step Act of 2019 would, among other things, al ow courts to reduce
the sentence of a federal juvenile offender tried as an adult if the offender had served at least 20 years in
prison and the court found that (1) the offender did not pose a safety risk and (2) the interests of justice
warranted a sentence modification. The Second Look Act of 2019 would al ow federal inmates sentenced
to more than 10 years in prison to petition for sentence reductions. The Second Look Act would not limit
such petitions to juvenile offenders but would direct courts to consider factors including “the diminished
culpability of juveniles as compared to that of adults, and the hal mark features of youth, including
immaturity, impetuosity, and failure to appreciate risks and consequences, if the defendant was a juvenile
at the time of the offense.”
As noted above, the Supreme Court plans to hear oral argument in Jones on November 3, 2020. Oral
argument may provide additional insight into how the judges wil rule in this case.

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Author Information

Joanna R. Lampe

Legislative Attorney

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