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In Graham v. Florida, the Supreme Court held that 鈥淸t]he Constitution prohibits the imposition of a life without parole sentence on a juvenile offender who did not commit homicide.鈥� 560 U.S. 48, 82 (2010). While a State need not guarantee a juvenile nonhomicide offender鈥檚 eventual release, it may not impose a sentence that 鈥済uarantees he will die in prison without any meaningful opportunity to obtain release.鈥� Id. at 79.The question in this case is whether States can bypass that rule by sentencing a juvenile offender who did not commit homicide to a term-of-years sentence under which he will not be eligible for parole until he is 112 years old.

The trial judge in Petitioner Bobby Bostic鈥檚 case sentenced him to die in prison for two separate robberies he committed on one day when he was 16 years old, telling him at sentencing, 鈥測ou will die in the Department of Corrections.鈥� Pet. App. 41a. The Missouri Supreme Court holds that this is not a constitutional problem because the Graham rule applies only to 鈥渁 single sentence of life without parole for a nonhomicide offense,鈥� not to 鈥渏uveniles who were convicted of multiple nonhomicide offenses and received multiple fixed-term sentences.鈥� But Graham himself committed multiple nonhomicide crimes. And the constitutional flaw in 骋谤补丑补尘鈥檚 sentence was not that it was formally denominated 鈥渓ife in prison without parole,鈥� or that it was imposed for a single act of wrongdoing, but that it 鈥渄enied him any chance to later demonstrate that he is fit to rejoin society.鈥� Id. That flaw is precisely the same where, as here, a juvenile has been sentenced on multiple counts arising out of a single day鈥檚 acts to a term of years intentionally designed to guarantee that he will die in prison. To suggest otherwise would allow states to evade 骋谤补丑补尘鈥檚 central premise whenever a juvenile鈥檚 actions support more than one criminal count.