High Court Won't Review Challenge to Arizona Juvenile Life Sentences

Over the dissents of its three liberal members, the Supreme Court said on Tuesday that it would not hear an appeal from a juvenile offender in Arizona who was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. The case could affect dozens of prisoners. It concerns Lonnie Bassett, who was convicted of two murders committed in 2004 when he was 16. Bassett was riding in the back seat of a car when he shot the driver and a passenger, reports the New York Times. When he was sentenced, Arizona law did not give the judge the option of sentencing him to anything but life in prison without the possibility of parole. A 2012 Supreme Court decision, Miller v. Alabama, rejected mandatory sentences for youths who committed murders before they turned 18. To be constitutional, the court said, state laws must allow judges the option of sentencing juvenile offenders to life with the possibility of parole. Still, the Arizona Supreme Court upheld Bassett’s sentence.

In dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, said the state court’s decision violated the precedent. The Arizona Supreme Court agreed but said that an idiosyncratic feature of the state law, allowing judges to choose between “natural life” without the possibility of release in any fashion and life without parole but with the theoretical possibility of clemency from the governor, rendered it constitutional. Rejecting the usual understanding of the governing precedent, the court said, “Miller and its progeny do not specifically require the availability of parole when sentencing a juvenile offender.” Lawyers for Bassett asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene, saying that his case could determine the fates of more than two dozen other juvenile offenders. In a brief urging the Supreme Court not to hear the case, Arizona Attorney General Kristin Mayes did not defend the State Supreme Court’s reasoning. “Parole eligibility is constitutionally required,” Mayes wrote. “This court’s precedents have already firmly established this fact, and Arizona does not disagree.”