New Interlocutory Appeal Grant

The Court granted an interlocutory appeal today in Raines v. The State, asking whether "a defendant facing a sentence of life without parole for an offense committed when he was a juvenile have a constitutional right to have a jury (as opposed to a judge) make the requisite determination of whether he is 'irreparably corrupt' or 'permanently incorrigible'?

The question deals with the United States Supreme Court's holdings in Miller v. Alabama, 567 U.S. 640 (2012) and Montgomery v. Louisiana, 136 S.Ct. 718 (2016), holding that mandatory life without parole sentences violate the 8th Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment, and that a juvenile homicide offender cannot be sentenced to life without parole unless he is found to be 'irreparably corrupt' or 'permanently incorrigible.' "