Evan Miller and other juvenile offenders haven’t been resentenced nearly four years after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that laws requiring juveniles convicted of murder to be sentenced to die in prison violate the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
Miller was 14 in July 2003 when he and another teen beat and robbed 52-year-old Cole Cannon. In 2006, Miller was convicted of capital murder in his hometown of Moulton, Alabama.
Professor Jenny Carroll recently told the Juvenile Justice Information Exchange that attorneys for Miller and those representing the state of Alabama may be conducting their own evaluations of him in preparation for a hearing.
“How well has he behaved while in custody? What’s his record as a prisoner? Has he done things like further his education? Has he engaged in acts we would consider good acts, to suggest he has in fact been rehabilitated?” Carroll asked. “The more time Miller has to do that, the more likely he is going to able to make a claim that, ‘Not only does my sentence need to be revisited because of the Supreme Court decision, but it needs to be revisited because I was such a radically different person than I was at the time I was sentenced originally.’”
For more, read “Long after Landmark Decision, Evan Miller Still Waits for Resentencing.”
