Published on: Wednesday, April 28, 2021

In 2003, at the age of 14, Evan Miller beat his neighbor with a bat and then set his trailer on fire in the town of Moulton, Alabama.  A jury convicted him of murder in 2006 and he was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.  At the time, Alabama law mandated that juveniles convicted of murder die in prison even if a judge or jury would have thought that Evan’s youth and its attendant characteristic, along with the nature of the crime, made a lesser sentence appropriate.  In other words, the sentencer was unable to consider and give effect to Evan’s compelling mitigation, which included:  

  • Evan grew up under conditions of violent physical abuse, extreme neglect, and severe poverty. Both his parents were alcoholics and his mother was also addicted to illegal drugs. The family moved so often that, at trial, his mother could not recall all the schools Evan had attended.
  • Evan’s father frequently beat Evan, his mother, and his siblings severely. After one such incident, Evan attempted to hang himself in order to escape his father's violence. Evan was five years old at this time. He went on to attempt suicide five more times during his childhood. At age six he began receiving mental health treatment and was then treated intermittently by several local mental health centers. He also attempted to escape his brutalizing environment by drinking and using drugs, beginning as early as age eight.
  • When Evan was ten, state authorities finally responded to his father’s abuse by removing Evan and his siblings from their home and placing them in foster care.  His parents divorced at that time.  After he was returned to the custody of his drug-addicted mother a few years later, she continued to fail to provide him with the most basic necessities or even minimal supervision.  With no guidance or support, Evan followed his parents' models: his own drug addiction continued to escalate, ultimately leading to daily off-label ingestion of prescription medications in addition to frequent use of marijuana and crystal methamphetamines.
  • On the night of the murder, Evan and a friend were smoking 420 and playing drinking games with the victim (one of Evan’s mother’s drug dealers) before the boys robbed and killed him.

The U.S. Supreme Court subsequently reversed Evan’s LWOP sentence and held that mandatory life without parole for those under the age of 18 at the time of their crimes violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on “cruel and unusual punishment.”  Miller v. Alabama, 567 U.S. 460, 465 (2012).  That’s because such mandatory schemes prevent those meting out punishment from considering a juvenile’s “lessened culpability” and greater “capacity for change.”  Indeed, Miller reasoned:

[G]iven all we have said in Roper, Graham, and this decision about children's diminished culpability and heightened capacity for change, we think appropriate occasions for sentencing juveniles to this harshest possible penalty will be uncommon.  That is especially so because of the great difficulty we noted in Roper and Graham of distinguishing at this early age between ‘the juvenile offender whose crime reflects unfortunate yet transient immaturity, and the rare juvenile offender whose crime reflects irreparable corruption.’

The Supreme Court’s 2012 decision in Miller gave hope to many juvenile offenders serving LWOP sentences that they might one day get out of prison.  As did the Court’s 2016 decision in Montgomery v. Alabama, 136 S. Ct. 718 (2016), holding that Miller announced a new rule of substantive constitutional law that applied retroactive on collateral review.  Montgomery reaffirmed that LWOP for juveniles is excessive for all but "the rare juvenile offender whose crime reflects irreparable corruption," and that children who commit even heinous crimes are capable of change.

In 2017, Evan had a resentencing hearing before a Lawrence County Alabama Circuit Judge.  His lawyers presented a number of lay and expert witnesses to support the case that Evan should get a chance at eventual release.  Yesterday, nearly four years after his resentencing hearing, Evan was resentenced to life without the possibility of parole in a hearing that was held via Zoom with Evan appearing remotely.

Evan’s new LWOP sentence comes just days after Jones v. Mississippi, No. 18-1259 (Apr. 22, 2021), holding that the Eighth Amendment does not require a finding of permanent incorrigibility before sentencing a juvenile convicted of homicide to life in prison without parole.