A Liberty Interest in Release: Recognizing the Unconstitutionality of Youth Offender Parole Regimes that Undermine Juvenile-Specific Eighth Amendment Protections

This Note proposes that procedural due process safeguards are necessary to vindicate the right to release for juvenile offenders who mature and rehabilitate. Miller v. Alabama and Montgomery v. Louisiana announced this right, but state actors have resisted the “central intuition” of those cases—“that children who commit even heinous crimes are capable of change.” Several overlapping analyses establish a liberty interest in release for transiently immature juvenile offenders based on the Eighth Amendment, the Fourteenth Amendment, local law, or some combination of the three. Most of these analyses hinge on the premise that post-Miller juvenile offender parole processes are of constitutional magnitude. Youth offender parole hearings carry constitutional weight that mandates recognizing a liberty interest in release upon a showing of maturity and rehabilitation, so due process protections are required.