Tennessee's Supreme Court ruled Friday that the state's 51-year minimum sentence for juvenile homicide offenders violates the Eighth Amendment's protection against "cruel and unusual" punishment. With the ruling, such lengthy sentences for juvenile homicide offenders are effectively ended in the United States, as Tennessee was the last remaining state to require that such offenders serve at least 50 years before being eligible for parole.
The ruling was handed down in Tennessee v. Booker. Tyshon Booker had been given a "life" sentence of at least 51 but no more than 60 years for the 2015 murder of 26-year-old G'Metrik Caldwell. Booker appealed the sentence, arguing that having to wait more than half a century for a parole hearing violated the Eighth Amendment. The court agreed: While it upheld Booker's life sentence, the court ruled that he will be granted a parole hearing much earlier than before—sometime after 25 to 36 years of prison time served, following the dictates of never-repealed sentencing guidelines in effect from 1989 to 1995.
