Page:Harris v. State (2018 Ark. 179).pdf/7

 Following the Supreme Court's Montgomery decision, the legislature passed the FSMA to "eliminate life without parole as a sentencing option for minors and to create more age-appropriate sentencing standards in compliance with the United States Constitution for minors who commit serious crimes." See Act of Mar. 20, 2017, No. 539, § 2(c), 2017 Ark. Acts 2615, 2617. The FSMA authorizes only one punishment for juvenile offenders convicted of capital murder: life with the possibility of parole after serving a minimum of thirty years' imprisonment. See FSMA § 3 (codified at Ark. Code Ann. § 5-4-104(b) (Supp. 2017)), and § 6 (codified at Ark. Code Ann. § 5-10-101(c) (Supp. 2017)). In addition, the parole-eligibility provision of the FSMA states that it "applies retroactively to a minor whose [first-degree murder or capital-murder] offense was committed before he or she was eighteen (18) years of age, including minors serving sentences of life, regardless of the original sentences that were imposed." FSMA § 13 (codified at Ark. Code Ann. § 16-93-621(a)(2)(B) (Supp. 2017)). The Act provides that all juvenile offenders sentenced to imprisonment are entitled to a parole-eligibility hearing at which the parole board shall take into consideration, among other things, Miller evidence and evidence of rehabilitation. Id. (codified at Ark. Code Ann. § 16-93-621(b) (Supp. 2017)). The emergency clause of the FSMA states that "more than one hundred persons in Arkansas are entitled to relief" under the Miller and Montgomery decisions and that the Act is "immediately necessary in order to make those persons eligible for parole." FSMA § 14.