Georgia Supreme Court affirms discretionary juve LWOP sentence despite judge’s statement it could not find juvenile “irreparably corrupt”

In the next few months, perhaps in the coming weeks, we should be getting an opinion from the Supreme Court in Jones v. Mississippi to help us better understand if Eighth Amendment jurisprudence requires a sentencer to make a specific finding about a juvenile before exercising its discretion to impose a sentence of life without parole.  In the meantime, states continue to struggle with juvenile LWOP sentencing requirements amidst all the resentencings that had to take place after Miller v. Alabama prohibited mandatory LWOP for juveniles. 

This morning, the Supreme Court of Georgia in Moss v. Georgia, S20A1520 (Ga. Mar. 15, 2021) (available here), addressed this issue in a case in which the sentencing court suggested it was impossible to make a certain finding about a juvenile defendant.  Here is the start and a key passage from the unanimous ruling in Moss:

Jermontae Moss was convicted of felony murder, possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime, and theft by receiving stolen property in connection with the shooting death of Jose Marin. On appeal, Moss contends that his trial counsel provided constitutionally ineffective assistance and that the trial court erred in sentencing Moss—a 17-year-old juvenile at the time of the crimes—to life in prison without the possibility of parole (“LWOP”) for murder.  Neither of Moss’s contentions has merit, so we affirm….

It is true, as Moss points out, that at one point in its lengthy order the trial court also opined on the role of the “Divine” in the ultimate judgment of a human being:

This Court cannot find, in this case or in any other, that the Defendant himself is “irretrievably corrupt” or “permanently incorrigible.” And it is this Court’s firm opinion that no court at any level is ever able to make such a determination; it is beyond human capacity. Only a Divine Judge could look into a person and determine that he is permanently and irretrievably corrupt; that he has reached a state from which there is no return, no hope of redemption, no hope of any restoration.

(Emphasis in original.)  But we do not view Miller or Montgomery — or cases from this Court applying Miller and Montgomery, such as Veal, White, and Raines — as requiring the trial court to conduct a metaphysical assessment of a juvenile defendant.  Given the express determinations contained in the trial court’s order and summarized in part above, we cannot say that the trial court’s additional observations about the metaphysical — especially when viewed in the full context of the court’s order — somehow rendered the trial court’s analysis erroneous.