Justices Refuse To Limit Life Sentences For Minors By Jack Karp | April 22, 2021, 4:22 PM EDT Juveniles convicted of murder can be sentenced to life in prison without parole without being found to be "permanently incorrigible" by a judge, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Thursday. In a 6-3 decision in Jones v. Mississippi, the justices held that the Eighth Amendment does not require judges to find that a person convicted of a murder they committed before they were 18 is forever irredeemable before sentencing them to life without parole. The petitioner, Brett Jones, who was given such a sentence after being convicted of murder for killing his grandfather when he was 15, had argued that the high court's rulings in two previous cases — Miller v. Alabama and Montgomery v. Louisiana — barred the judge in his case from condemning him to life in prison without first finding that he was "permanently incorrigible," a standard that comes from the Montgomery decision.