Jones v. Mississippi

Jones v. Mississippi
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued November 3, 2020 Decided April 22, 2021
Full case name	Brett Jones v. State of Mississippi
Docket no.	18-1259
Citations	593 U.S. ___ (more) 141 S. Ct. 1307 209 L. Ed. 2d 390
Case history
Prior	Defendant convicted in Lee County Circuit Court; conviction affirmed, Jones v. State, 938 So. 2d 312 (Miss. Ct. App. 2006) Denial of post-conviction relief affirmed, 122 So. 3d 725 (Miss. Ct. App. 2011) Affirmed in part, reversed in part, 122 So. 3d 698 (Miss. 2013) On remand, 285 So. 3d 626 (Miss. Ct. App. 2017) Cert. granted sub nom., Jones v. Mississippi, 140 S. Ct. 1293 (2020)
Holding
In the case of a defendant who committed a homicide when he or she was under 18, Miller and Montgomery do not require the sentencer to make a separate factual finding of permanent incorrigibility before sentencing the defendant to life without parole. In such a case, a discretionary sentencing system is both constitutionally necessary and constitutionally sufficient.
Court membership
Chief Justice John Roberts Associate Justices Clarence Thomas · Stephen Breyer Samuel Alito · Sonia Sotomayor Elena Kagan · Neil Gorsuch Brett Kavanaugh · Amy Coney Barrett
Case opinions
Majority	Kavanaugh, joined by Roberts, Alito, Gorsuch, Barrett
Concurrence	Thomas (in judgment)
Dissent	Sotomayor, joined by Breyer, Kagan
Laws applied
U.S. Const. amend. VIII

Jones v. Mississippi, 593 U.S. ___ (2021), was a United States Supreme Court case regarding the imposition of life sentences for juveniles. The Supreme Court had previously ruled in Miller v. Alabama in 2012 that mandatory life sentences without parole for juvenile offenders was considered cruel and unusual punishment outside of extreme cases of permanent incorrigibility, and made this decision retroactive in Montgomery v. Louisiana in 2016. In Jones, a juvenile offender who was 15 at the time of his offense, challenged his life sentence following Montgomery but was denied by the state. In a 6–3 decision with all six conservative justices upholding the life sentence without parole for Jones, the Court ruled that the states have discretionary ability to hold juvenile offenders to life sentences without parole without having to make a separate assessment of their incorrigibility.