Miller V. Alabama Case Study

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Each year in the United States, children as young as 13 years old are sentenced to spend the rest of their lives in prison without any chance of getting released. There has been a worldwide agreement declaring that children cannot be held to the same standards of responsibility as adults and it is recognized that children are entitled to special protection and treatment. There are three types of juvenile waivers that have been allowing juveniles to be treated as adults in adult court. The Miller v. Alabama case is a step toward more just treatment of juvenile offenders following several decades’ worth of harsh treatment of youthful offenders.
States have assumed that the juvenile justice system was the main way to shield the public by having …show more content…

Between 1985 and 1995, the nation witnessed a nearly 80% rise in arrests of juveniles 17 years old or younger for violent crimes, including murder, forcible rape, and aggravated assault (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1970-2003). The media said that there was a new generation of young “super predators” who were considered to be more violent, ruthless, and against being rehabilitated. New judicial transfer statutes made it easier to send the cases of any juveniles charged with felonies off to adult criminal courts. All but six states enacted such statutes between 1992 and 1997 (Snyder, Sickmund, & Poe-Yamagata, 2000). Today, all states have created ways to deal with juveniles in adult court. The judicial waiver is found in 46 states and requires juvenile courts to waive jurisdiction over certain criminal cases involving juveniles so they can be charged as adults. In 15 states, laws give prosecutors the choice of whether or not juveniles charged with certain felonies are going to be tried as a juvenile or an adult. There are 29 states that exclude serious felonies from being tried in juvenile court, so they are sent straight to adult …show more content…

Alabama has proven challenging (Darden, 2014). Miller was 14 years old when he committed his crime. He was found guilty of capital murder and received a life without parole sentence. Miller did not get to appeal anything on the state level, so his counsel filed a writ of certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court, which let the case get reviewed in November 2011. On June 25, 2012, the Supreme Court officially ruled that mandatory life without parole sentences for juveniles convicted of homicide are unconstitutional (Swift, 2013). This means that it doesn’t ban judges from sentencing young offenders under the age of 18 to life without parole if mitigating factors are looked at. The Supreme Court has reasoned that “when compared to an adult murderer, a juvenile [nonhomicide] offender…has twice diminished moral culpability,” thus rendering life without parole cruel and unconstitutional (Lerner, 2012). The court’s incremental progress began with Roper v. Simmons, which prohibited mandatory life sentences for all non-homicide youth offense, and was followed by Graham v. Florida, which eliminated the death penalty for juvenile offenders (Swift, 2013). Miller, along with Roper, has banned mandatory life without parole juveniles charged of all offenses including murder. The Miller decision had an instant effect on 29

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