Jones v. Mississippi

Brett Jones (defendant) was a juvenile who murdered his grandfather while under the age of 18 and was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. Under the Supreme Court’s ruling in Miller v. Alabama, a court could sentence a juvenile under the age of 18 to life without the possibility of parole if the sentence was not required and the sentencer had the discretion to choose a punishment that was less severe. A subsequent case, Montgomery v. Louisiana, extended the retroactive application of Miller on collateral review. In Jones’s case, the judge sentenced Jones after acknowledging that he had the discretion under Miller to impose a lighter sentence. Jones appealed, and an appellate court affirmed. On appeal to the United States Supreme Court, Jones argued that the Court’s holding in Miller was not satisfied by sentencing discretion in itself. Jones argued that before the judge could sentence him to life without parole, the judge should have made a finding of fact that he was permanently incorrigible. Mississippi argued that whether a juvenile was permanently incorrigible was not an eligibility factor. Although Miller required a sentencer to treat a juvenile’s youth as a mitigating element if imposing life without parole, Miller did not mandate a separate finding regarding incorrigibility. In deciding Miller, the Supreme Court had considered data from 15 states that demonstrated that if sentencers had sentencing discretion, sentencing a juvenile to life without parole was rare. The Supreme Court reasoned that such would be the case for juvenile defendants.