Henry Montgomery, Petitioner v. Louisiana.

Summary

The Supreme Court held that Miller v. Alabama announced a new substantive rule of constitutional law — barring life without parole for all but the rarest juvenile offenders whose crimes reflect irreparable corruption — and that the Constitution requires state collateral review courts to give retroactive effect to new substantive rules, so Henry Montgomery, automatically sentenced to life without parole in 1970 for a 1963 murder committed at age 17, must be given an opportunity to show his crime did not reflect irreparable corruption. The Court also confirmed its jurisdiction, reasoning that a state court's refusal to give retroactive effect to a controlling substantive constitutional rule implicates a federal right, and noted that a State may remedy a Miller violation by making juvenile homicide offenders eligible for parole rather than resentencing them. The Louisiana Supreme Court's judgment was reversed and remanded. Justice Scalia, joined by Justices Thomas and Alito, dissented on both jurisdiction and the merits, arguing the Court rewrote Miller as a categorical bar; Justice Thomas wrote separately to contend that the jurisdictional holding lacks any foundation in the Constitution's text or historical traditions.