Whether the Eighth Amendment requires juvenile defendants who received mandatory life without parole sentences to receive adversarial resentencing proceedings

QUESTIONS PRESENTED Petitioner is a Missouri prisoner who is serving a mandatory sentence of life without parole for a murder, committed when he was seventeen years old, that was declared unconstitutional in Miller v. Alabama, 132 S. Ct. 2455 (2012). After the Miller decision issued, petitioner filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the Missouri Supreme Court seeking a new individualized sentencing proceeding as required by the Eighth Amendment under Miller. After the decision issued in Montgomery v. Louisiana, 136 S. Ct. 718 (2016), the Missouri Supreme Court issued an order and judgment granting the petition, in part, holding that Montgomery did not require a resentencing proceeding and that the Eighth Amendment violation under Miller could be rectified if either the Missouri legislature or the Governor allowed petitioner and other similarly situated Missouri prisoners to petition for parole after serving twenty-five years. Shortly thereafter, the Missouri legislature passed S.B. 590, which modified Missouri’s first degree murder statute and its parole laws to allow juveniles who received mandatory sentences of life without parole to petition the parole board to hold a hearing after they have served twenty-five years of their sentences. After the Governor signed this legislation, the Missouri Supreme Court withdrew its previous order and summarily denied petitioner’s habeas corpus petition, citing the enactment of S.B. 590. Petitioner then filed another original habeas corpus petition in the Missouri Supreme Court asserting that S.B. 590 was constitutionally insufficient to remedy his Eighth Amendment rights to an adversarial resentencing proceeding and a meaningful opportunity for release. The Missouri Supreme Court summarily denied petitioner’s habeas petition. Based upon the foregoing events, this case presents the following questions regarding whether the Missouri Supreme Court’s ruling that this legislation, that allows juveniles the possibility of obtaining parole after twenty-five years without the necessity of a resentencing proceeding, violates the Sixth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments. 1. Does the Eighth Amendment, as interpreted in Miller and Montgomery, require juvenile defendants, who had previously been illegally sentenced to mandatory terms of life imprisonment without parole for murder, receive adversarial resentencing proceedings. 2. Do Missouri’s parole laws and procedures, as modified by S.B. 590 to permit juveniles serving mandatory life sentences without the possibility of parole to request a parole hearing after serving twenty-five years, violate the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments by failing to provide juvenile offenders a meaningful and realistic opportunity for release. 3. Do the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments require that a jury must find beyond a reasonable doubt that a juvenile’s crimes reflect “irreparable corruption” and were not the result of “transient immaturity” before a sentence of life without parole may be imposed.