Linda Pedroza v. State of Florida

Summary

The court held that Pedroza's forty-year sentence for a murder committed at age seventeen does not violate the Eighth Amendment because she did not establish that the sentence is life imprisonment or its functional equivalent. The court clarified that Miller does not require individualized youth consideration for every juvenile term-of-years sentence and rejected a categorical rule requiring resentencing for all juvenile sentences exceeding twenty years without early-release review. The court approved the decision upholding Pedroza's sentence and limited or rejected contrary lower-court decisions to that extent.