WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 23rd April, 2021) The US Supreme Court on Thursday ruled against a man seeking parole for killing his grandfather at the age 15 in a move that it could make it easier for states across the United States to enact life sentences without commutation.
Brett Jones, a Mississippi man who is now 31, argued that his sentence to life in prison with no chance of parole violated the Eighth Amendment of the US Constitution because the judge in his trial had not made a separate finding that he was permanently incorrigible. Six conservative justices, who form the majority of the US Supreme Court, disagreed with him, with one of them, Brett Kavanaugh, saying:� "We must reject Jones's argument."
Jones was found to have fatally stabbed his grandfather in 2004 after an argument over the teen's girlfriend.
Kavanaugh, who authored the decision by the six judges ruling against Jones, said it was the responsibility of the US states and not courts to "make those broad moral and policy judgments" about juvenile sentencing reform.
"Jones's argument that the sentencer must make a finding of permanent incorrigibility is inconsistent with the court's precedents," Kavanaugh wrote. "In light of that explicit language in the Court's prior decisions, we must reject Jones's argument. We affirm the judgment of the Mississippi Court of Appeals."
The ruling comes after recent US Supreme Court decisions that put a limit on life sentences without parole for juvenile offenders.
