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5 Va. J. Crim. L. 130 (2017)
Sentencing Juvenile Homicide Offenders: A 50-State Survey

handle is hein.journals/virjcr5 and id is 134 raw text is: Virginia Journal of Criminal Law SENTENCING JUVENILE HOMICIDE OFFENDERS: A 50-STATE SURVEY Kallee Spooner* & Michael S. Vaughn ABSTRACT Recently, the U.S. Supreme Court recognized that youth are constitutionally different from adults for the purpose of sentencing. In the latest case on this issue, Miller v. Alabama, the Court held that juvenile homicide offenders cannot be sentenced to lfe without parole (LWOP ) without consideration of the individual mitigating qualities of youth that make them less deserving of the state 's most severe punishment. The Court provided little guidance on how to proceed with this directive, however. Through an inductive doctrinal analysis, this article assesses the current state of sentencing in juvenile homicide cases by analyzing statutes and judicial decisions in all fifty states. Findings show disagreement as to what constitutes appropriate sentence length and varied approaches to individualized sentencing of youthful homicide offenders. The article concludes that in order to meet Supreme Court benchmarks, lawmakers and judges need to provide further clarity on how to approach the problem of homicide perpetrated by youth. Kallee Spooner is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology in the College of Criminal Justice at Sam Houston State University. ** Michael S. Vaughn, Ph.D., is a Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology in the College of Criminal Justice at Sam Houston State University and is Co-Director of the Institute for Legal Studies in Criminal Justice at Sam Houston. 130 [Vol. 5:2

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