I continue to wonder when the Supreme Court will take up a new case to clarify (or, ideally, extend) its Eighth Amendment jurisprudence limiting extreme prison sentences set forth in Graham and Miller. The latest Relist Watch from John Elwood at SCOTUSblog spotlights a few cases that might be in the works as the next possible Miller follow-up:
Newton v. Indiana, 17-1511, and Mathena v. Malvo, 18-217, both raise the same issue involving the lawfulness of imposing a discretionary life sentence on a juvenile offender. In Miller v. Alabama, the Supreme Court held that “mandatory life without parole for those under the age of 18 at the time of their crimes violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on ‘cruel and unusual punishments.’” Four years later, in Montgomery v. Louisiana, the court held that “Miller announced a substantive rule of constitutional law” that must be given retroactive effect in cases in which direct review was complete when Miller was decided. Numerous state courts and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit have held that Montgomery expanded the prohibition against “mandatory life without parole for those under 18 at the time of their crimes” to include discretionary life sentences as well; other courts have concluded that Montgomery did no such thing. Petitioner Larry Newton, a prisoner, and Randall Mathena, the chief warden of Virginia’s high-security Red Onion State Prison, seek resolution of the issue.
As an aside, the respondent in Mathena v. Malvo will be familiar to anyone who lived in the D.C. area in fall 2002. When he was 17 years old, Lee Boyd Malvo, along with the much older John Allen Muhammad, committed a series of murders known as the “D.C. sniper” attacks. Currently, Malvo is serving multiple life sentences at Red Onion for his role as the triggerman in 10 of the shootings (Virginia executed Muhammad in 2009.).
Because the next SCOTUS conference is not until January 4, we will not know anything more on this front until next year.
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