Page:Harris v. State (2018 Ark. 179).pdf/19

 minors. The first prong of the FSMA sought to follow the road map laid out by the Supreme Court in Montgomery by statutorily curing the defect for those who were sentenced prior to Miller. This first prong specifically and retroactively provided parole eligibility to those juvenile offenders sentenced under the previous version of the statute. The second prong addressed the underlying sentencing statute to cure its constitutional defects.

Determining the sentencing ranges for crimes committed within our state is a policy determination that belongs to the people through their elected representatives in the legislative branch. State v. Freeman, 312 Ark. 34, 37, 846 S.W.2d 660, 661 (1993) ("It is well settled that it is for the legislative branch to determine the kind of conduct that constitutes a crime and the nature and extent of punishment which may be imposed."). It is the role of the judiciary to apply those sentences within the legislatively determined range when a defendant is convicted, so long as the terms of the sentencing statute are not constitutionally defective. On rare occasions the courts are faced with a statutory void and they must step in and act when there is an absence of legislative action or, as in this case, when the void is created by a constitutionally infirm action.

Mr. Harris is part of a class of people who have come to be known as "the Miller defendants." The so-called Miller defendants were convicted of murders that were committed while they were still minors and sentenced to life without parole under a statute that was then presumed to be constitutional. Then, the Supreme Court in Miller determined that sentencing a defendant to life without parole for a crime committed as a