Illinois Supreme Court Makes Landmark Ruling Retroactive

In a pivotal case this March, the Illinois Supreme Court ruled that Illinois prisoners serving life sentences without parole for crimes committed when they were under 18 will receive new sentence hearings. This case arose after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that life without parole for crimes committed by people under the age of 18 was unconstitutional. The next question in line became whether this ruling would apply only to future cases or to those already serving their sentence. Individual states are now figuring that piece of the equation out.
This decision brings hope to the eighty juveniles in Illinois currently serving life without parole sentences and forces judges to take a closer look at who these young offenders really are as their cases are reopened. There has been significant research leading up to this on the principle that “children are different” from adult offenders and that placing life sentences without parole or imposing the death penalty on juveniles is “cruel and unusual.”
A similar decision was reached in California in August 2012 with the Supreme Court ruling in People vs. Caballero. In this case, the Supreme Court ruled that life without parole was unconstitutional and could be applied retroactively to defendants who were sentenced as juveniles for a non-homicide offense. The Washington Legislature also passed a bill this year that would allow juvenile offenders serving life sentences to be eligible for a chance at release after 20 years.

It will be interesting to watch as more states decide how to proceed with the U.S. Supreme Court ruling, which affects about 2,400 sentences across the nation. Subscribe to the Reclaiming Futures E-Newsletter to stay up-to-date on future rulings.

Ashley Heinonen writes the Friday news roundup, opportunity board roundup, and contributes articles featuring information about juvenile justice reform to ReclaimingFutures.org. She graduated from Loyola Marymount University and is currently an assistant account executive for Prichard Communications.