Flagging challenge to Arizona’s suspect application of Miller juve LWOP limis

Adam Liptak has this new piece at the New York Times detailing a pending Supreme Court challenge to how Arizona had dealt with Miller’s Eighth Amendment limit on juve LWOP sentences. Here is the piece’s full headline: “In Arizona, Life Sentences for Juveniles Test Supreme Court Precedents: The justices will soon decide whether to hear a case that could affect more than two dozen youths sentenced to die in prison.” Here is an excerpt:

The new case involves Lonnie Bassett, who was convicted of two murders committed when he was 16. When he was sentenced in 2006, Arizona law did not give the judge the option of sentencing him to anything but life in prison without the possibility of parole.

In a unanimous opinion last year, the Arizona Supreme Court did not dispute that. But it said an idiosyncratic feature of the state law, allowing judges to choose between “natural life” without the possibility of release in any fashion and life without parole but with the theoretical possibility of clemency from the governor, rendered it constitutional.

Rejecting the usual understanding of the governing precedent, the court said, “Miller and its progeny do not specifically require the availability of parole when sentencing a juvenile offender.”

Lawyers for Mr. Bassett asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene, saying that his case could determine the fates of more than two dozen other juvenile offenders. The case, they wrote, “presents exceptionally significant questions about gamesmanship and the supremacy of federal law.”