When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2012 in Miller v. Alabama that mandatory sentences of life without parole are unconstitutional for juveniles—and four years later in Montgomery v. Louisiana that Miller was retroactive—it gave more than 2,000 inmates reason for hope. It also gave attorneys around the country thousands of hours of pro bono work to take on in the quest to get those inmates resentencing hearings.
Rachel Strong, senior pro bono counsel at Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, says her firm first got involved in representing three juvenile lifers when the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth began mobilizing around the issue shortly after Miller came down. The firm began representing Donte Lamar Jones, who was 17 when he and a friend robbed a 7-Eleven and he shot and killed a clerk. Morgan Lewis partner Duke McCall III has led the firm’s efforts to get Jones a second chance, as the case has traveled up and down the Virginia appellate ladder in the face of stiff opposition from the state. The firm has also gotten positive results on resentencing for two clients in Pennsylvania—home to nearly one-quarter of the country’s juvenile lifers—joining a deep roster of Big Law firms pitching in.
