By Sam Ozer-Staton

 The Supreme Court’s new conservative majority is finally asserting itself. In a controversial 6-3 decision, the Court ruled that a judge need not find "permanent incorrigibility" before sentencing a juvenile offender to life-without-parole. The case, Jones v. Mississippi, represents a sharp break from the Court’s recent trend toward forgiveness and rehabilitation for young offenders.

At the center of the case is Brett Jones, a Mississippi man who, at the age of 15, murdered his grandfather. In August of 2004, Jones was living with his grandparents in the small town of Shannon, Mississippi. After Jones’s grandfather, Bertis, discovered Jones’s girlfriend in Jones’s bedroom, the two family members got into a heated argument. A few hours later, the argument escalated and turned violent, and Jones stabbed his grandfather eight times with a kitchen knife, killing him. Jones then haphazardly attempted to cover up the murder before being detained at a gas station several miles from the house.

Jones was convicted of murder, and a Mississippi judge sentenced him to life-without-parole, the mandatory sentence in the state at the time. But in the years since Jones was sentenced, the Supreme Court decided two landmark cases on mandatory life-without-parole sentences for juveniles, Miller v. Alabama in 2012, and Montgomery v. Louisiana in 2016.