Veal v. Georgia

Robert Veal was initially sentenced to life without parole for a crime committed when he was 17 years old. Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decisions in Miller v. Alabama and Montgomery v. Louisiana, holding mandatory life without parole sentences unconstitutional when imposed on children, Mr. Veal was resentenced to 8 consecutive life sentences plus an additional 60 years.

Juvenile Law Center, along with Children and Family Justice Center, and The Sentencing Project, filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Supreme Court in support of Mr. Veal’s petition for certiorari. Our brief urged the court to grant review in order to clarify that its prior rulings extend to term-of-years sentences that are the functional equivalent of juvenile life without parole and hold that any sentence that condemns a youth to die in prison is constitutionally disproportionate regardless of whether it is formally labeled “life without parole.”

The court declined to take review.