The verdict in Montgomery v. Louisiana is in and considering the implications, I’m almost certain Jan. 25, 2015 will go down in history as a signature victory for criminal justice reform in the United States. By a margin of 6-3, the Supreme Court extended a 2012 ruling (Miller v. Alabama) retroactively, striking down automatic life sentences without parole possibility for teenage killers in the United States.
Moreover, the ruling is retroactive, meaning that inmates who were given life sentences without the possibility of parole as teenagers long ago can now petition their freedom.
Justices Anthony Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Chief Justice John Roberts ruled in favor, while Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Antonin Scalia ruled against extending Miller v. Alabama retroactively.
In writing for the majority, Justice Kennedy said “prisoners like Montgomery must be given the opportunity to show their crime did not reflect irreparable corruption; and if it did not, their hope for some years of life outside prison walls must be restored.”
In writing for the dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia claimed that the decision in Montgomery v. Louisiana “is just a devious way of eliminating life without parole for juvenile offenders.”
The central figure of this case is Henry Montgomery, who was convicted of killing a sheriff’s deputy in 1963. At the time of the killing, Montgomery was 17-years-old. He has been in prison for over 50 years.
Louisiana, Michigan, and Pennsylvania together house almost 1,000 inmates who were incarcerated as juveniles without a chance at parole. They are among a handful of states who have refused to extend the Supreme Court’s ruling in Miller v. Alabama retroactively.
The verdict in Montgomery v. Louisiana is the latest in a years-long sequence of decisions that have limited how juveniles can be incarcerated. Justices Kennedy, Ginsberg, and Breyer were also part of the majority in Roper v. Simmons (2005), which determined that sentencing a juvenile offender to death row was unconstitutional. Justices Kennedy, Ginsberg, Breyer, Stevens, and Sotomayor also composed the majority in Graham v. Florida (2010), which stated juvenile offenders could not be sentenced to life in prison without parole for non-homicide offenses.
Criminal law decisions such as these are normally applied retroactively.
We’ve spent a lot of time being tough on crime and what has it really achieved? Some would argue that the borderline militant response to crime in the United States has effectively perpetuated more crime being committed than if the country took a more altruistic approach.
In many nations around the world, indefinite incarceration has been abolished.
Consider Norway’s criminal justice system. Norway does not have the United States’ guerilla warfare mentality on crime. They take a restorative approach to criminal justice. As of August 2014, Norway’s incarceration rate is just 75 people per 100,000, mostly for theft and economic “white collar” crimes. That’s not to say that there aren’t violent criminals and drug traffickers in Norwegian prison, just not that many. Meanwhile, the United States has an incarceration rate of 707 people per 100,000, almost ten times that of Norway.
When it comes to recidivism, or re-offending, only about 20 percent of Norway’s offenders re-offend, compared to nearly 77 percent of United States offenders re-offending within five years of release.
Why is all of this significant? Because Norway’s criminal justice system contributes to its better overall numbers. In Norway, there is no indefinite prison sentence, unless the offender is deemed to be dangerous to society at the time of their prospective release. No offender in Norway, save for those deemed dangerous at the time of their prospective release, spends more than 21 years in prison. This is designed with the idea that people are not “irreparably corrupted,” regardless of the crimes they commit.
Unfortunately, in the United States, we view offenders as being “irreparably corrupted” when they commit heinous crimes. It’s that mentality that contributes to the incarceration rate, the condition of prisons in the United States, and the high rate of recidivism, among other controversies that routinely manifest in American criminal justice. It’s like trying to drive somewhere by taking nothing but left turns — you’ll always end up in the same place over and over again.
It is not the opinion of this writer that criminal justice in America should become an amusement park for murderers, rapists, and hucksters. It’s not the opinion of the Supreme Court in Montgomery v. Louisiana either. But, there is a point when being tough on something goes too far and when it comes to criminal justice in America, we have gone too far. Inmates, by and large, feel remorse and atone for their transgressions and many of them have to continue living in danger and squalor until they either die by disease, age, or prison violence.
This is bad enough for adults. It’s almost criminal when this kind of life begins as a juvenile.
Henry Montgomery has been prison since before President Kennedy was killed in Dallas. He was a 17-year-old black teenager in Louisiana at a time when white men strung blacks up into trees for the amusement of white men, women, children, lawyers, bankers, cops, politicians, and doctors alike. He killed a white sheriff’s deputy. For over fifty years, Henry Montgomery has been paying for a crime that while he did commit, happened as a product of the Louisiana in which he lived.
I think fifty years is plenty of time to atone for murder. Do you?
Featured image by Bob Jagendorf, available under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
