State of Tennessee v. Tyshon Booker

Tyshon Booker challenges the constitutionality of Tennessee’s mandatory sentence of life

imprisonment when imposed on a juvenile homicide offender. In fulfilling our duty to

decide constitutional issues, we hold that an automatic life sentence when imposed on a

juvenile homicide offender with no consideration of the juvenile’s age or other

circumstances violates the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment under the

Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Mr. Booker stands convicted of

felony murder and especially aggravated robbery—crimes he committed when he was

sixteen years old. For the homicide conviction, the trial court automatically sentenced Mr.

Booker under Tennessee Code Annotated section 40-35-501(h)(2) to life in prison, a

sixty-year sentence requiring at least fifty-one years of incarceration. But this sentence

does not square with the United States Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Eighth

Amendment. When sentencing a juvenile homicide offender, a court must have discretion

to impose a lesser sentence after considering the juvenile’s age and other circumstances.

Here, the court had no sentencing discretion. In remedying this constitutional violation, we

exercise judicial restraint. We need not create a new sentencing scheme or resentence Mr.

Booker—his life sentence stands. Rather, we follow the policy embodied in the federal

Constitution as explained in Montgomery v. Louisiana, 577 U.S. 190 (2016) and grant Mr.

Booker an individualized parole hearing where his age and other circumstances will be

properly considered. The timing of his parole hearing is based on release eligibility in the

unrepealed version of section 40-35-501(h)(1), previously in effect, that provides for a term

of sixty years with release eligibility of sixty percent, but not less than twenty-five years

of service. Thus, Mr. Booker remains sentenced to sixty years in prison, and after he has

served between twenty-five and thirty-six years, he will receive an individualized parole