Adult Time for Adult Crime: Life Without Parole for Juvenile Offenders Is Constitutional

Cully Stimson / October 29, 2009

In 2005, the Supreme Court held in Roper v. Simmons that the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution bar the application of the death penalty to offenders who were under the age of 18 when their crimes were committed. Since then, the decision’s reasoning has become the cornerstone of the efforts of those who oppose life without parole for juvenile offenders and has reinvigorated their legal crusade to put an end to the practice.

The text and history of the Eighth Amendment, however, provide little support for the idea that life without parole for juvenile offenders constitutes prohibited “cruel and unusual” punishment. Even departing from the text and employing a Roper-style analysis is unavailing; the factors that the Court considered in that case all mitigate in favor of life without parole’s constitutionality, even as applied to juvenile offenders. (more…)