Brett Kavanaugh's Opinion Restoring Juvenile Life Without Parole Is Dishonest and Barbaric

[Nevilledog]

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Mark Joseph Stern
@mjs_DC
·
Apr 22, 2021
Replying to @mjs_DC
To put this in very stark terms, the appointment of Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett are THE reason why the Supreme Court just effectively reinstated juvenile life without parole. Kennedy had taken huge strides toward abolishing it, and they just undid his handiwork.

Mark Joseph Stern
@mjs_DC
What an awful day for juvenile justice, for the rights of children, for the Constitution. A devastating, duplicitous, and disgusting decision that overturns a landmark precedent at the heart of Anthony Kennedy's legacy. A horrible, barbaric injustice.

Brett Kavanaugh’s Opinion Restoring Juvenile Life Without Parole Is Dishonest and Barbaric
Without admitting it, Kavanaugh overturned landmark precedents protecting the constitutional rights of children.
slate.com

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/04/brett-kavanaugh-sonia-sotomayor-juvenile-life-without-parole.html

In an appalling 6–3 decision on Thursday, the Supreme Court effectively reinstated juvenile life without parole by shredding precedents that had sharply limited the sentence in every state. Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s majority opinion in Jones v. Mississippi is one of the most dishonest and cynical decisions in recent memory: While pretending to follow precedent, Kavanaugh tore down judicial restrictions on JLWOP, ensuring that fully rehabilitated individuals who committed their crimes as children will die behind bars. Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent, joined by Justices Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan, pulls no punches in its biting rebuke of Kavanaugh’s duplicity and inhumanity. It doubles as an ominous warning that the conservative majority is more than willing to destroy major precedents while falsely claiming to uphold them.

The Supreme Court strictly curtailed the imposition of juvenile life without parole in two landmark decisions: 2012’s Miller v. Alabama and 2016’s Montgomery v. Louisiana. In Miller, the court ruled that mandatory sentences of JLWOP—that is, sentences imposed automatically upon conviction—violate the 8th Amendment’s bar on “cruel and unusual punishments.” It explained that children’s crimes often reflect “transient immaturity”; because their brains are not fully developed, young offenders are “less culpable” than adults and have greater potential for rehabilitation. In Montgomery, the court clarified that discretionary sentences of JLWOP—that is, sentences imposed at the discretion of a judge—are generally unconstitutional, as well. It then applied these rules retroactively, allowing all incarcerated people who were condemned to life without parole as children to contest their sentences. Taken together, Miller and Montgomery held that JLWOP is unconstitutional for “all but the rarest of juvenile offenders, those whose crimes reflect permanent incorrigibility.” And they forbade judges from imposing JLWOP unless they found that the defendant’s crime reflected “irreparable corruption.”

On Thursday, Kavanaugh overturned these decisions without admitting it. His majority opinion in Jones v. Mississippi claims fidelity to Miller and Montgomery while stripping them of all meaning. Kavanaugh wrote that these precedents do not require a judge to “make a separate factual finding of permanent incorrigibility” before imposing JLWOP. Nor, Kavanaugh wrote, do they compel a judge to “at least provide an on-the-record sentencing explanation with an implicit finding of permanent incorrigibility.” Instead, a judge need only be granted “discretion” to sentence a child to less than life without parole. So long as that discretion exists, Kavanaugh held, the 8th Amendment is satisfied—even if the judge provides no indication that they actually considered the defendant’s youth, gauged their potential for rehabilitation, and nonetheless decided their crime reflected “permanent incorrigibility.”

As Sotomayor noted in her extraordinary dissent, “this conclusion would come as a shock to the Courts in Miller and Montgomery.” Those decisions explicitly required the judge to “actually make the judgment” that the child is incorrigible. They also “expressly rejected the notion that sentencing discretion, alone, suffices.” Kavanaugh claimed that he followed these precedents, Sotomayor wrote, but he “is fooling no one.” (Justice Clarence Thomas, writing separately, was more honest than Kavanaugh: He acknowledged that the majority had subverted Montgomery, and supported openly killing it off instead of quietly overruling it while pretending to follow it.)

*snip*

[TDale313]

1. Let's talk about the shit he did when he was young and stupid

shall we? And pretty sure on a lot of it he wasn’t even a minor.

[MagickMuffin]

2. I'm assuming this decision is based on the color of one's skin

Lock up the darker skin tones while letting the lighter skin tones serve another kind of sentencing, ya know the future sport stars, if they are white.

[Bettie]

3. We must rebalance the court

We have 13 circuit courts, we should have 13 justices.

[CrispyQ]

4. That sounds like a great argument. Why don't we use it? -nt

[Takket]

5. this is terrible

a free, just and compassionate society does not lock up 15 year olds without the possibility of parole. this is a clear and blatant violation of the 8th amendment and the people that was supposed to be the arbitors of the 8th just decided it doesn't exist.

[CrispyQ]

6. Juvenile life without parole.

Goddamned, they are some mean fucks! Over & over the meanness of the Republican Party is on display to the point it's hard to have any respect for those I know who still identify with the party.