By Lisa Soronen

In 2012 in Miller v. Alabama, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that states may not mandate that juvenile offenders be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

The question in Toca v. Louisiana is whether Miller is retroactive, should it apply to those convicted before the case was decided. 

George Toca was 17 when his best friend was accidentally shot during a botched armed robbery in 1984. Under Louisiana’s mandatory sentencing scheme, Toca was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

The Louisiana Supreme Court held that Miller does not apply retroactively because it does not set forth a new substantive rule of criminal constitutional procedure. 

A few other lower courts have reached the same conclusion, reasoning that Miller isn’t a substantive rule because it does not bar all life sentences without parole for children.

Toca argues that “[i]n finding that the Miller rule is merely procedural [and not substantive], those courts erroneously continued to perceive life without parole as the default sentence for a child convicted of a homicide, and that Miller merely mandates a slight alternation in the process by which a child receives that sentence.”

The court added a second question to this case of whether it raises a federal question. If it does not, the court will not have jurisdiction to answer the first question in this case.     

Lisa Soronen is executive director of the State and Local Legal Center. She writes frequently on U.S. Supreme Court cases for the NCSL Blog.