Proportionality and Punishment: Imposing Life without Parole on Juveniles

The Eighth Amendment provides that “no cruel and unusual punishment shall be inflicted.” The Supreme Court has interpreted to this to mean a punishment cannot be “grossly disproportionate” to the crime. In this article, the author addresses whether an offender\u27s age should play a role in assessing whether a sentence is “grossly disproportionate.” Specifically, the author addresses the increasingly common practice of imposing life without parole on offenders who are under sixteen years of age at the time they committed their offense, and whether such offenders’ youthful status should play a role in proportionality analysis. The article first provides an overview of the rise in punitive approaches in juvenile sentencing and then examines the evolving standards used by the Supreme Court to assess proportionality. The author argues that, given the special traits of the population at issue, and the systemic shortcomings of the juvenile waiver system that ushers juveniles into adult court, appellate courts need to modify the proportionality analysis they employ when assessing the constitutionality of life without parole imposed on those less than sixteen