Applying the three criteria, the Court concluded that Helm's sentence was grossly disproportionate to his crime of uttering a "no account" check for $100, even in light of his prior six non-violent felony convictions.¹⁷ Id. at 289-90, 303. The Court emphasized that Helm's life sentence "[wa]s far more severe than the life sentence we considered in Rummel" because Rummel was likely eligible for parole in 12 years while Helm was given no possibility of parole at all. Id. at 297.¹⁸

In 1991, the Supreme Court revisited Solem and Rummel in Harmelin, a case involving a defendant's Eighth Amendment challenge to his mandatory sentence under Michigan's drug laws of life in prison without the possibility of parole for possession of more than 650 grams of cocaine, his first felony offense. Harmelin, 501 U.S. at 961. The Court upheld Harmelin's sentence with five justices agreeing that it did not violate the Eighth Amendment, although for different reasons. Justice Scalia, joined only by Chief Justice Rehnquist, concluded that the decision in Solem was "simply wrong: the Eighth Amendment contains no proportionality guarantee." Id. at 965. Justice Kennedy, joined by Justices O'Connor and Souter, stated that a non-capital sentence could violate the Eighth Amendment if it was grossly disproportionate to the

less serious than violent crimes, the more that is stolen the more serious the offense, lessor included offenses are less serious than the greater offense, and attempts and accessories are less culpable than actual commissions and principals. Id. at 292-93.
¹⁷Justice Powell's majority opinion in Solem used "grossly disproportionate" and "significantly disproportionate" interchangeably. See, e.g.,id. at 284, 288, 291 n.17 (using "grossly disproportionate") and at 303 (using "significantly disproportionate"). Justice Kennedy's concurrence in Harmelin cited Solem, 463 U.S. at 288, 303, for the "grossly disproportionate" standard. 501 U.S. at 1001.
¹⁸The Court rejected the State's argument that it should consider the possibility that the governor could commute Helm's sentence to a term of years because while parole was a "regular part of the rehabilitative process," commutation was an "ad hoc exercise of executive clemency" Id. at 300-03.

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