In the final days of last year, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court made a significant ruling regarding the sentencing of young people in Massachusetts. The court ruled unanimously that the U.S. Supreme Court's Miller v. Alabama decision -- which held that mandatory sentences of life without the possibility of parole are unconstitutional for youth -- applies retroactively. However, the Massachusetts court took the Supreme Court's decision one step further when it also ruled that any sentence of life without the possibility of parole is unconstitutional for youth, regardless of whether the sentence is mandatory or discretionary.
The ruling rests on conclusive scientific evidence regarding young people's brain development. Research has shown that young people's brains do not reach developmental maturity until their mid-20s, and these findings have increasingly been used to bolster arguments for differential treatment of youth in the justice system. In fact, the ruling reads, “In the present circumstances, the imposition of a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole for the commission of murder in the first degree by a juvenile under the age of eighteen is disproportionate not with respect to the offense itself, but with regard to the particular offender.”
Current estimates project that this ruling will make roughly 40 people immediately eligible for parole, perhaps impacting closer to 80 existing cases in the long term.