Tennessee v. Tyshon Booker

This Court’s Eighth Amendment jurisprudence prohibits life-without-parole sentences for juvenile offenders in two circumstances: (1) when the juvenile has not committed a homicide, Graham v. Florida, 560 U.S. 48 (2010), and (2) even when the juvenile has committed a homicide, when life without parole is the mandatory sentence, Miller v. Alabama, 567 U.S. 460 (2012). Tyshon Booker committed a murder and a robbery when he was 16 years old. He was not sentenced to life without parole, but the trial court imposed a mandatory life sentence, which requires service of 51 years’ imprisonment before Booker can be released. A divided Tennessee Supreme Court held that this sentence also violates the Eighth Amendment, App. 65a–76a (plurality opinion), although a strong dissent described the ruling as “a policy decision . . . that impermissibly move[d] the [c]ourt into an area reserved to the legislative branch,” App. 92a (Bivins, J., dissenting). In a pending petition for a writ of certiorari (Case No. 22-7180), Booker urges the Court to consider whether the initial juvenile-transfer decision must be made by a jury, not a judge. The State of Tennessee, as Cross-Petitioner, presents the following additional question for review: Whether this Court should extend Graham and Miller to term-of-years prison sentences that permit a juvenile offender’s release after a lengthy period of incarceration.