In state prisons scattered across ten states, and in a handful of federal penitentiaries, a group of 129 prisoners on Monday gained a new constitutional right from the Supreme Court, but not one of them yet knows whether the ruling will lead to freedom. Each of them, convicted as minors and sentenced to life in prison without the chance of release, learned that it would no longer be possible for any juvenile to get that sentence in the future if the crime did not involve murder. But the Court did not rule that any of those 129 must now be released, or even that any of them must be re-sentenced. That was not what they won.
Instead, each of the 129 must be given some chance to show, at some point in the future, that they have matured enough while in prison that they might then be ruled “fit to rejoin society” (in the Court’s phrase) rather than staying in prison for the rest of their lives. And, while every other juvenile who commits a serious “non-homicide” crime from now on has won a right not to be sentenced to life without potential release; the decision leaves open the possibility that conviction for such a juvenile might lead to a definite prison sentence of perhaps 40 or more years, thus stretching their confinement long into the future, perhaps to old age.
Threads merged. Stupid SCOTUS making work for me today
