Fulfilling Miller’s
and Montgomery’s Mandate:
Judicial Review of Parole Decisions for Juvenile Offenders
Alexandra Harrington, Yale
In the last decade, the Supreme Court
has issued a series of decisions giving children sentenced to life without
parole hope of a future beyond bars. Most recently, Miller v. Alabama prohibited mandatory life without
parole for juveniles, and Montgomery
v. Louisiana made Millerretroactive.
Montgomery asserted,
without further analysis, that the opportunity for parole can remedy a Miller violation: parole ensures that
children “who have since matured . . . will not be forced to serve a
disproportionate sentence in violation of the Eighth Amendment.” The Court’s
vague promise, however, leaves open the important question of what standards,
if any, a parole hearing must satisfy in order to comply with Miller’s constitutional
requirements.
As this article details, in
response to the Court’s decisions, many states have implemented parole
eligibility for juveniles serving long sentences. Yet, some states prohibit
judicial review of parole decisions, and others limit review to an assessment
of whether the hearing met minimum procedural requirements. This article argues
that, post-Montgomery, the parole process itself must be understood to
assume constitutional significance and therefore must be accompanied by
substantive judicial review to preserve Montgomery’s
promise.
Here, the Eighth
Amendment works in conjunction with due process requirements to necessitate
more than mere procedural review; instead, it requires substantive scrutiny of
whether the applicant has indeed not been “forced to serve a disproportionate
sentence.” Such review would determine, at a minimum, whether parole was denied
for reasons unresponsive to the constitutional concerns of demonstrated
maturity and rehabilitation.
Accessing Injustice takes a close look at a part of the criminal justice system
that is often unseen.
The Sentencing
Project: Where to Now?
Bob Rigg, Drake University
In what started out to be an outline for possible sentences
imposed in criminal cases constructed by a Judge of Iowa Court of Appeals, now
has become a 500-page document with over 5000 footnotes, incorporating relevant
case law and linking each code section to the Iowa Legislature’s website. The
evolution from outline to a sentencing project was accomplished by a Judge of
the Iowa Court of Appeals, a faculty member of the Drake Legal Clinic, and most
importantly by law students. The Sentencing Project, in application and
construction, illustrates the development of practical scholarship by a legal
clinic. The project, which illuminates the complexity of existing Iowa criminal
law, seeks to increase judicial efficiency by presenting a comprehensive
document linking criminal offenses to the possible sentencing consequences
cited and cross referenced in various sections of the Iowa Code.
The focus of the presentation will center on the current and
future development of the Sentencing Project as well as the feasible
technological improvements to the project, where the project came from, where
it is, and where it should/could be in the future. In other words where do we
go from here?