Minors in Tennessee who are convicted of homicide are sentenced to life in prison with little to no exceptions. But the Tennessee Supreme Court now says those sentences amount to “cruel and unusual punishment.” The state’s highest court ruled Friday that mandatory life sentences for minors violate the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Tennessee has an automatic life sentence of 60 years for homicides by juveniles, making it one of the strictest in the nation. No other state has a mandatory that high for a single offense. People who receive a life sentence in Tennessee must serve at least 51 years before being eligible for release.
The ruling, made in a case involving a Knoxville teenager sentenced to life for killing someone in a botched robbery, could pave the way for nearly 200 people to be released from prison for crimes they committed as juveniles.
The state has seen national backlash to its minimum sentences for juveniles since 2017, when celebrities like Kim Kardashian and Rihanna called for the release of Cyntoia Brown-Long. At age 16, Brown-Long was tried as an adult for a crime she committed as a sex trafficking victim. She was 31 when then-Gov. Bill Haslam commuted her sentence in 2019.
This latest case involves Tyshon Booker of Knoxville, who was sentenced to life in 2015 when he was 16 years old. He also received a 20-year sentence for armed robbery, to be served at the same time.
The Tennessee Supreme Court found that mandatory life sentence unconstitutional, but it did not grant Booker a new sentence. Instead, the court said Booker can get a parole hearing, where “his age and other circumstances” will be considered, once he’s served between 25 to 36 years. That means he has more than 18 years left before he can have a chance at parole.
The vote of the Tennessee Supreme Court in Booker’s case was 3-2, with one justice concurring. Justice Sharon G. Lee and Special Justice William C. Koch Jr. wrote for the majority that, while mandatory life sentences are unconstitutional under federal court rulings, it would not be necessary to grant Booker a new sentence to correct the problem.
“Here, the court has no sentencing discretion,” they wrote. “In remedying this constitutional violation, we exercise judicial restraint.”
In her concurring opinion, Justice Holly Kirby noted that no state sentences juveniles to more than 50 years for a single crime. “In the entirety of the nation, Tennessee stands alone,” she wrote.
Chief Justice Roger Paige and Justice Jeff Bivins dissented, saying the majority opinion goes beyond the U.S. Supreme Court’s rulings against mandatory life sentences for minors. They say the General Assembly should instead tackle the issue.
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