Bryan A. Stevenson

Evan Miller and Kuntrell Jackson arrived in court through different homicides and different states. Both were fourteen at the time of their offenses. After their convictions, the sentencing authorities had no lawful choice of punishment.

Alabama and Arkansas required life imprisonment without parole. The judge could not substitute a term that allowed later release. Maturity, family life, vulnerability to older companions and participation in the offense could not change the sentence. Nor could distinctions in intent, coercion, intellectual capacity, trauma or prospects for rehabilitation.

Bryan Stevenson represented Miller and Jackson through the Equal Justice Initiative and argued both cases before the Supreme Court on March 20, 2012. He challenged the mandatory imposition of the harshest noncapital punishment on children whose individual circumstances could make a different sentence appropriate.

The Cases Behind the Argument

Stevenson founded EJI in 1989 and remains its executive director in Montgomery, Alabama. A graduate of Harvard Law School and the Harvard Kennedy School, he built a practice representing people facing severe punishment, including children prosecuted as adults. Miller and Jackson’s cases grew from the organization’s sustained juvenile-sentencing work.

After the Supreme Court barred the juvenile death penalty in Roper v. Simmons in 2005, EJI began investigating how many children had been sentenced to life without parole. Its report documented seventy-three cases involving offenses at thirteen or fourteen. Those individual cases supplied the basis for a national litigation campaign. Graham v. Florida then barred juvenile life without parole for nonhomicide offenses in 2010. Miller and Jackson brought the question of homicide sentences before the Court.

What Youth Changes

Stevenson drew on Roper and Graham to argue that adolescents’ developmental differences remained relevant when the offense was grave. Children are more impulsive than adults, more susceptible to peer pressure and less able to escape destructive environments. Their characters are less fixed, with greater prospects for change. Predicting permanent dangerousness meant judging someone whose maturity and self-control were still developing.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg asked whether a hearing at which he could present all the mitigating circumstances would satisfy him. Stevenson said it would not: the offense could overwhelm the evidence of youth, and a new procedure would not resolve the difficulty of distinguishing a child’s temporary characteristics from permanent ones.

Justice Anthony Kennedy then asked whether it would be unprincipled to prohibit mandatory sentences while allowing life without parole in some cases. Stevenson accepted that such a ruling would be principled. He kept that possibility open while defending a categorical ban for children under eighteen, arguing that it would be “a mistake to equate kids with adults.”

The EJI team’s work was accompanied by briefs from scientists, former judges, correctional officials, lawyers, advocates and victims’ representatives. They addressed adolescent development, responsibility and the consequences of imposing an irrevocable sentence on a child.

The June 2012 Ruling

On June 25, 2012, the Supreme Court ruled five to four that the Eighth Amendment forbids mandatory life without parole for juvenile homicide offenders. Justice Elena Kagan wrote the majority opinion, joining the Court’s juvenile-sentencing precedents with its requirement for individualized consideration before the most severe punishments.

Miller and Jackson became entitled to new sentencing hearings. Stevenson and his colleagues had secured the opportunity to present age, circumstances and participation as reasons for a different punishment. A sentencer could still impose life without parole after considering youth and its attendant characteristics, but the Court expected that choice to be uncommon.

Alabama had argued that youth could be considered earlier, when deciding whether a child would be prosecuted as an adult. The Court rejected that substitute. Transfer decisions could belong to prosecutors or operate mandatorily, and they addressed adult prosecution rather than proportional punishment after conviction. The sentencing authority had to consider the individual before choosing the punishment.

Earlier Sentences Return to Court

Thousands of people had received mandatory life without parole years or decades before Miller. State courts divided over whether the ruling reached their final convictions.

In Montgomery v. Louisiana, decided in 2016, the Supreme Court held that Miller applied retroactively on state collateral review. States could provide a new sentencing proceeding or make affected prisoners eligible for parole.

In Jones v. Mississippi, decided in 2021, the Court held that federal law did not require a separate finding of permanent incorrigibility before imposing juvenile life without parole. A discretionary system allowing consideration of youth satisfied the federal requirement. Legislatures and state courts remained free to require additional findings, parole eligibility or categorical limits.

Implementation produced different outcomes. Some prosecutors again sought life without parole; other people received terms that allowed release after demonstrating maturity and rehabilitation. In June 2022, EJI reported that more than 880 people sentenced as children had been released, citing figures from the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth.

Miller and Jackson After the Judgment

Evan Miller’s resentencing included testimony from family members, correctional officials, educators and a child psychiatrist, together with records concerning his childhood and development. The Lawrence County Circuit Court again imposed life without parole in April 2021. The Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed in August 2023 after reviewing the individualized sentencing findings.

Alabama’s sentencing framework supplied additional factors for the court to consider alongside the federal requirement of a discretionary system that considers youth. The defense could now present evidence about Miller’s age, environment, pressure, participation and capacity for change as part of the choice of punishment.

Kuntrell Jackson was released on February 21, 2017. By July 2019, he was studying film and theatre at a university in Montgomery and volunteering at the Legacy Museum, which Stevenson had helped create through EJI. That month, ACLU of Missouri staff member Elaine Sutton watched Jackson describe his imprisonment in a video exhibit. When she turned to leave, he was standing behind her, answering visitors’ questions.