In the case of Jones v. Mississippi, 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court was asked to determine whether a discretionary sentencing procedure is necessary before a minor can be sentenced to life imprisonment without parole. The petitioner, Brett Jones, who had been convicted for murder committed when he was under 18 and given such sentence argued that his Eighth Amendment rights were violated as per precedents set in Miller v. Alabama (2012) and Montgomery v. Louisiana (2016). These cases ruled that mandatory life sentences without parole for juvenile offenders are unconstitutional unless it's proven they're incapable of rehabilitation or "permanently incorrigible". However, in this case the court upheld Jones' sentence with a 6-3 decision stating that its precedent only requires courts to consider an offender’s youth as mitigating circumstance but does not require them to make separate factual findings about permanent incorrigibility before imposing such punishment.

In the dissenting opinion for Jones v. Mississippi, Justice Sonia Sotomayor argued that the majority's decision was a departure from precedent set in two previous cases: Miller v. Alabama and Montgomery v. Louisiana, which held that mandatory life without parole sentences for juvenile offenders are unconstitutional unless the offender is found to be "permanently incorrigible." According to Sotomayor, these precedents required a separate factual finding of permanent incorrigibility before such a sentence could be imposed on a juvenile offender. She criticized the majority's interpretation as allowing judges to hand down life without parole sentences even if they believe rehabilitation is possible or likely for an individual defendant - something she believes contradicts both legal precedent and scientific research about adolescent brain development and capacity for change.