By John Mills
A judge in Hillsborough County, Florida recently struck down Florida’s juvenile first-degree murder sentencing scheme because it violates Miller v. Alabama, a Supreme Court case decided in 2012. In Miller, the Supreme Court held that sentencers must have the discretion to consider the mitigating aspects of youth before sentencing a juvenile to life without parole. The underlying premise of that decision was that juveniles are different and require individualized consideration in fashioning the punishment and rehabilitative services tailored to their situation and offense.
The Florida court validated the basic premise of Miller. It held that a mandatory minimum of forty years prevented courts from adequately considering the mitigating characteristics of youth and, based on those characteristics and their interplay with the offense, fashioning an appropriate remedy.
The Hillsborough County court joined the Iowa Supreme Court in recognizing that Miller requires more than the simple availability of a sentence less than life without parole. Instead, Miller requires courts to consider youth and to have the flexibility to adopt a remedy that meets the unique challenges of the youthful offender before the court. Mandatory minimums, such as Florida’s and the one struck down in Iowa, foreclose that possibility.
Practitioners across the nation are raising similar challenges. For example, states with mandatory transfer provisions, such as California’s, subject juveniles to adult court and adult sentences without consideration of youth and may violate Miller’s mandate. As I have suggested elsewhere, other states, particularly those that lack discretion both at the “transfer” stage—when juveniles are transferred to adult court—and at the sentencing stage, may also have work to do even four years after Miller.
John Mills is a Principal Attorney at the Phillips Black Project and an adjunct professor at UC Hastings College of Law.