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176 L. Ed. 2d 825

Graham v. Florida

Supreme Court of the United States

Decided May 17, 2010

Supreme Court of the United States · decided 2010-05-17

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

“[t]he Constitution prohibits the imposition of a life without parole sentence on a juvenile offender who did not commit homicide”

quoted by 14 later decisions, including United States v. Spires, 252 N.C. App. 174 - State v. Jefferson

“Nothing in the Court's opinion affects the imposition of a sentence to a term of years without the possibility of parole.”

quoted by 3 later decisions, including Vasquez v. Commonwealth, State v. Slocumb

Relies on Yee v. City of Escondido · Graham v. Florida · 982 So. 2d 43 - Graham v. State

Cited together with Roper Superintendent Potosi Correctional Center v. Simmons · Graham v. Florida · Miller v. Alabama

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 2010-05-17

How this case has been cited

Cited by 1,030 later decisions (3 by the Supreme Court) — most recently February 2025 · most notably J. D. B. v. North Carolina (2011), Heller v. District of Columbia (2011)

103 federal appellate · 6 district · 798 state decisions — followed in 43 states

989020102020decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

Justice Alito,

¶1dissenting.

¶2I join Parts I and III of Justice Thomas’ dissenting opinion. I write separately to make two points.

¶3First, the Court holds only that “for a juvenile offender who did not commit homicide the Eighth Amendment forbids the sentence of life without parole.” Ante, at 74, 176 L. Ed. 2d, at 845 (emphasis added). Nothing in the Court’s opinion affects the imposition of a sentence to a term of years without the possibility of parole. Indeed, petitioner conceded at oral argument that a sentence of as much as 40 years without the possibility of parole “probably” would be constitutional. Tr. of Oral Arg. 6-7; see also ante, at 123, n. 13, 176 L. Ed. 2d, at 876 (Thomas, J., dissenting).

¶4Second, the question whether petitioner’s sentence violates the narrow, as-applied proportionality principle that applies to noncapital sentences is not properly before us in this case. Although petitioner asserted an as-applied proportionality challenge to his sentence before the Florida courts, see 982 So. 2d 43, 51-53 (Fla. App. 2008), he did not include

¶5[560 U.S. 125]

¶6an as-applied claim in his petition for cer-tiorari or in his merits briefs before this Court. Instead, petitioner argued for only a categorical rule banning the imposition of life without parole on any juvenile convicted of a nonhomi-cide offense. Because petitioner abandoned his as-applied claim, I would not reach that issue. See this Court’s Rule 14.1(a); Yee v. Escondido, 503 U.S. 519, 534-538, 112 S. Ct. 1522, 118 L. Ed. 2d 153 (1992).

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