The case of Virginia, et al. v. Dennis LeBlanc (2016) revolved around the issue of whether a state's parole process could provide a meaningful opportunity for release to juvenile offenders sentenced to life imprisonment without parole, in accordance with the Supreme Court’s ruling in Graham v. Florida (2010). The petitioner was Dennis LeBlanc who had been convicted and sentenced as an adult at 17 years old for rape and abduction crimes committed in 1999. He argued that Virginia's geriatric release program did not offer him a genuine chance at obtaining release based on demonstrated maturity and rehabilitation, thus violating his Eighth Amendment rights against cruel and unusual punishment under Graham. However, the U.S Supreme Court ruled against LeBlanc stating that it was not objectively unreasonable for the lower court to conclude that Virginia’s geriatric release program satisfied the requirement set forth by Graham because it provided some possibility of release based on individual growth and maturity.

In the dissenting opinion for Virginia, et al. v. Dennis LeBlanc, Justice Sonia Sotomayor argued that the majority's decision failed to properly apply a precedent set by an earlier case (Graham v. Florida), which ruled that juvenile offenders cannot be sentenced to life without parole unless they are given some "meaningful opportunity" for release based on demonstrated maturity and rehabilitation. In this case, LeBlanc was denied parole under a geriatric release program after being convicted of rape as a teenager and sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of conventional parole. The majority held that this did not violate Graham because he had access to the geriatric release program when he turned 60 or served 10 years in prison - whichever came second - but Sotomayor disagreed, arguing it did not provide him with any real chance at freedom due its discretionary nature and focus on factors unrelated to his growth or rehabilitation.