In the Alabama case, Evan Miller was convicted of murder. A 52-year-old neighbor was smoking marijuana and drinking with Miller and a 16-year-old boy. The two youths robbed the neighbor, beat him with a baseball bat and then set fire to his trailer, causing him to burn to death.
In the Arkansas case, Kuntrell Jackson received a sentence of life in prison in the shooting death of a video store clerk during an attempted robbery with two other teenagers in 1999. Another boy shot the clerk, and Jackson was convicted for his role as an accomplice.
Writing for the court majority, Justice Elena Kagan said the sentencing authority in both cases had no discretion whatsoever to impose a different punishment other than life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
She said state law mandated that each juvenile die in prison, even if a judge or jury would have thought the offender's age and the nature of the crime would have made a lesser sentence more appropriate.
"By requiring that all children convicted of homicide receive lifetime incarceration without possibility of parole, regardless of their age and age-related characteristics and the nature of their crimes, the mandatory sentencing schemes violate" the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment, she said.
The court's most conservative members, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented.
Alito read part of his dissent from the bench, saying the court now holds that Congress and legislatures of all 50 states are barred from identifying any category of murderers under age 18 who must be sentenced to life in prison without parole.
"Even a 17-1/2 year-old who sets off a bomb in a crowded mall or guns down a dozen students and teachers is a 'child' and must be given a chance to persuade a judge to permit his release into society," he said.
Alito said the ruling could lead to young murderers being be released and to kill again.
The Supreme Court cases are Evan Miller v. Alabama, No. 10-9646, and Kuntrell Jackson v. Hobbs, No. 10-9647.
(Editing by Howard Goller and Will Dunham)
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