Justices Press DOJ Over 180 In Crack Case By
Jimmy Hoover | May 4, 2021, 7:04 PM EDT The Biden administration s 180-degree turn in a case about crack sentencing disparities appears to have caught several U.S. Supreme Court justices off guard, with Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett pressing a government attorney during oral arguments Tuesday to explain the Department of Justice s process for changing positions.
In the case Terry v. U.S. before the Supreme Court,
the Biden administration abandoned the Trump administration s argument that certain people serving time in prison for low-level crack offenses are ineligible for reduced sentences under the First Step Act of 2018.
Justices Refuse To Limit Life Sentences For Minors By
Jack Karp | April 22, 2021, 4:22 PM EDT Juveniles convicted of murder can be sentenced to life in prison without parole without being found to be permanently incorrigible by a judge, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Thursday.
In a 6-3 decision in Jones v. Mississippi, the justices held that the Eighth Amendment does not require judges to find that a person convicted of a murder they committed before they were 18 is forever irredeemable before sentencing them to life without parole.
The petitioner, Brett Jones, who was given such a sentence after being convicted of murder for killing his grandfather when he was 15, had argued that the high court s rulings in two previous cases Miller v. Alabama and Montgomery v. Louisiana barred the judge in his case from condemning him to life in prison without first finding that he was permanently incorrigible, a standard that comes from the Montgomery decision.