Miller v. Alabama Applies Retroactively (and Then Some?)

The Supreme Court held Monday that the rule from Miller v. Alabama, 567 U.S. __ (2012), applies retroactively. In Miller, the Court held that a sentencing regime that makes life without parole mandatory for a murder committed by a defendant under the age of 18 is cruel and unusual punishment. In Montgomery v. Louisiana, 577 U.S. __ (2016), the Court said that rule likewise applies to defendants whose cases were final before Miller was decided on June 25, 2012. I originally discussed Miller here, and its specific implications for North Carolina here. Jessie set out the retroactivity issue here and recapped the Montgomery briefs here. In a nutshell, before Montgomery, courts across the country were divided on the question of whether Miller announced a new, substantive rule that applies retroactively, or a procedural rule that would not apply retroactively on collateral review. Miller did not, strictly speaking, categorically bar a sentence to life without parole for all defendants under 18. It merely required that the sentencing court have some choice of an alternative punishment (life without parole could not be mandatory), and that before choosing life without parole, the court must “follow a certain process—considering an offender’s youth and attendant characteristics.” Slip op. at 17. In that sense, the rule from Miller was different from other categorical (and thus substantive) punishment bans, like capital punishment for intellectually disabled defendants, Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304 (2002); capital punishment for defendants under 18, Roper v. Simmons, 543 U.S. 551 (2005); and life without parole for [...]