Whether the Eighth Amendment prohibits sentencing a juvenile offender to life without parole based solely on the nature of the crime without meaningfully considering the offender's capacity for rehabilitation and mitigating factors of youth

are of significant public interest and constitutional importance because they implicate the protection against cruel and unusual punishment for juveniles. Mr. Golphin is a 45-year-old man currently serving two LWOP sentences for offenses he committed in 1997 when he was 17-years old. As the victim of childhood abuse and neglect that began while he was in utero, and continued well into his adolescence, Mr. Golphin has suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and other significant mental and behavioral disorders linked to his childhood trauma. Moreover, at the time of his juvenile offenses, he had the emotional and behavioral maturity of a much younger boy and was less able to appreciate the consequences of his actions compared to the average 17-year-old. Over his decades of incarceration, Mr. Golphin has rehabilitated and reformed, going from nearly illiterate to an avid reader, earning a GED, completing all behavioral courses offered by the prison system, and maintaining many prison jobs. On May 138, 1998, a jury! sentenced Mr. Golphin to death. Thereafter, in December 2005, Mr. Golphin was resentenced to mandatory LWOP in accordance ‘A North Carolina court later found that the jury’s verdict was the product of racial bias. See Order, State v. Golphin, 97 CRS 47314-15 (Superior Ct. Cumberland Cty. Dec. 18, 2012), available at with this Court’s ruling in Roper v. Simmons, 543 U.S. 551, 572-73 (2005). Then, on July 19, 2018, following this Court’s rulings in Miller prohibiting mandatory LWOP sentences for juveniles without consideration of “how children are different, and how those differences counsel against irrevocably sentencing them to a lifetime in prison,” 567 U.S. at 480, and in Montgomery v. Louisiana, 577 U.S. 190, 206-08 (2016) holding that Miller applies retroactively, Mr. Golphin was granted a new sentencing proceeding. On April 13, 2022, after a three-day evidentiary hearing, the resentencing court rendered an oral decision, which it then memorialized in writing, resentencing Mr. Golphin to two LWOP sentences. In its order, the court reasoned that “Defendant’s crimes demonstrate his permanent incorrigibility and not his unfortunate yet transient immaturity.” Golphin, 2022 WL 22905357, at *3 (emphasis added). The North Carolina Court of Appeals then affirmed the LWOP sentences based on the resentencing court’s view of what Mr. Golphin’s “crimes [as a juvenile] demonstrated,” while disregarding evidence of Mr. Golphin’s reformation while incarcerated and continued capacity for change. Golphin, 898 S.E.2d at 52. The North Carolina Supreme Court declined to review the Court of Appeal’s decision. Golphin, 912 S.E.2d 838 (Mem.). The North Carolina courts’ sentencing of Mr. Golphin to LWOP by making the facts of his crimes dispositive, rather than meaningfully reviewing the facts and circumstances applicable to Mr. Golphin as a child offender and his subsequent rehabilitation as an adult, conflict with this Court’s Eighth Amendment holdings which prohibit courts from sentencing juveniles to LWOP based solely on the crimes they committed. At or around the same time it denied Mr. Golphin’s petition for review, the North Carolina Supreme Court issued a series of decisions likewise upholding LWOP sentences by elevating the crimes of conviction into t