Federal Court Holds Missouri’s Parole Process for Children Sentenced to Mandatory Life-without-Parole sentences is Unconstitutional

From [HERE] Missouri’s parole review process for children sentenced to mandatory life-without-parole sentences is unconstitutional, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit ruled, because it fails to “take into account the unique considerations of juvenile offenders” and provide a “meaningful opportunity to obtain release based on demonstrated maturity and rehabilitation.”

The case arises from Missouri’s implementation of the Supreme Court’s decision in Miller v. Alabama, which in 2012 struck down mandatory sentences of life imprisonment without parole for all children under 18.

In response to Miller, Missouri enacted a new law that converted life-without-parole sentences into life-with-parole sentences by making the nearly 100 people impacted by Miller eligible for parole after serving 25 years in prison.

The Missouri Board of Probation and Parole, however, denied parole to almost everyone who qualified for a hearing under the new law, leading to the filing of a class action lawsuit in 2017 challenging the parole board’s policies, as the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports.

In 2018, the lower federal court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, and the parole board changed its practices, resulting in the release of 17 people.

The State appealed, and on September 17, the lower court’s ruling was upheld by the Eighth Circuit.

Children Are Different

“[T]he [Supreme] Court has reaffirmed time and again that ‘children are constitutionally different from adults for sentencing purposes,'” the federal appeals court wrote in its decision.

Juvenile offenders, with their “transient rashness, proclivity for risk, and inability to assess consequences,” are in the eyes of the Constitution less morally culpable and more capable of reforming their deficiencies than adult offenders.

Accordingly, the Eighth Circuit decision states, “the punishment of life without parole is disproportionate and unconstitutional ‘for all but the rarest of juvenile offenders, those whose crimes reflect permanent incorrigibility.'”

To avoid disproportionate and unconstitutional life-without-parole sentences, the court wrote, the state must give a meaningful opportunity for release “to those who demonstrate the truth of Miller’s central intuition—that children who commit even heinous crimes are capable of change.”