{"id":10027,"date":"2010-05-17T10:19:06","date_gmt":"2010-05-17T15:19:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=10027"},"modified":"2010-05-17T10:20:55","modified_gmt":"2010-05-17T15:20:55","slug":"limits-to-life-scotus-issues-decision-in-graham","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2010\/05\/limits-to-life-scotus-issues-decision-in-graham\/","title":{"rendered":"Limits to Life: SCOTUS Issues Decision in Graham"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Supreme Court finally issued its long-awaited decision in Graham v. Florida<\/em> <\/a>this morning.\u00a0 And it turns out that the Eighth Amendment may not be so toothless after all: the Court held that sentencing a juvenile to life without parole for a nonhomicide crime violates the Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause.\u00a0 Graham received an LWOP sentence for a botched robbery at age sixteen.\u00a0 The Court overturned Graham’s sentence, holding that states must at least “give defendants like Graham some meaningful opportunity to obtain release based on demonstrated maturity and rehabilitation” (24).\u00a0 Thus, the Court did not preclude life sentences per se for juveniles, but rather focused on the availability of parole:<\/p>\n

The Eighth Amendment does not foreclose the possibility that persons convicted of nonhomicide crimes committed before adulthood will remain behind bars for life.\u00a0 It does forbid States from making the judgment at the outset that those offenders never will be fit to reenter society. (24)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Graham <\/em>breaks a string of defeats in the Court for Eighth Amendment challenges to prison terms.\u00a0 Although the Court has been quite active in recent years in using the Eighth Amendment to regulate the death penalty, the Court had seemed uninterested in imposing limitations on the use of lesser sentences.\u00a0 Of course, LWOP for a juvenile robbery is pretty extreme, so it would be premature to infer from Graham<\/em>\u00a0that the Court is going to get more involved in regulating long prison terms.<\/p>\n

Not suprisingly, Justice Kennedy authored the majority opinion.\u00a0 He has been the\u00a0swing Justice in the Court’s recent Eighth Amendment cases, and there was little doubt that he was going to be part of the majority in Graham <\/em>whichever way it came out.\u00a0 Slightly more surprising is that Chief Justice Roberts concurred in the judgment, making the final vote 6-3 (instead of the more typical 5-4 in Eighth Amendment cases).\u00a0 Based on this and a few other recent cases (for instance, with respect to jury-trial rights),\u00a0it seems to me\u00a0that Roberts is\u00a0not\u00a0as much an automatic vote against\u00a0 defendants\u00a0as his predecessor, Chief Justice Rehnquist.\u00a0 It is also interesting to see the Justice Sotomayor voted with the majority, suggesting that she may adhere to the position of her predecessor (Justice Souter) in supporting robust Eighth Amendment rights.\u00a0 Would a Justice Kagan do the same?\u00a0 Justice Stevens was part of several tenuous majorities in this area, meaning that his replacement has the potential to\u00a0bring about some major\u00a0changes in the Court’s Eighth Amendment jurisprudence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Supreme Court finally issued its long-awaited decision in Graham v. Florida this morning.\u00a0 And it turns out that the Eighth Amendment may not be so toothless after all: the Court held that sentencing a juvenile to life without parole for a nonhomicide crime violates the Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause.\u00a0 Graham received an LWOP […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-criminal-justice","category-us-supreme-court","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10027"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10027\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}