Supreme Court clarifies guidelines for resentencing juveniles tried as adults
Supreme Court clarifies guidelines for resentencing juveniles tried as adults
Senior Editor
Juveniles tried as adults for nonhomicide crimes cannot be sentenced with no chance of release to “nonlife” prison terms that will likely exceed their natural lifespans. And a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that juveniles convicted of murder cannot be sentenced to life without any sentence review applies retroactively in Florida.
The Florida Supreme Court unanimously reached those conclusions in four cases released on March 19 that deal with two landmark U.S. Supreme Court decisions on sentencing of juveniles.
Two of the cases dealt with the application of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Graham v. Florida, 560 U.S. 48 (2010), which held that juveniles convicted of nonhomicide offenses could not be sentenced to life sentences without the meaningful chance of having that sentence reviewed. The other two cases dealt with the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Miller v. Alabama, 132 S. Ct. 2455 (2012),which held that juveniles convicted of murder could not be sentenced to life in prison without parole without considering the special circumstances related to their age.
“This is a major decision for the state of Florida. The United States Supreme Court has in the last several years repeatedly stated that kids are different for purposes of sentencing,” said Paolo Annino, of the Florida State University College of Law Public Interest Law Center. “The theme of the last few years of these cases, kids are different and that a state cannot treat a kid like an adult for purposes of extreme sentencing.”
The two Graham appeals dealt with juveniles who had not been formally given life sentences, but who had been given sentences of 90 and 70 years. Justice James Perry, writing for the court in both cases, noted the U.S. Supreme Court had held that juveniles were different, with their brains not fully developed, and hence life sentences without parole violate the Eighth Amendment.
The state’s five district courts of appeal have split over whether such long sentences violate Graham, Perry wrote, with the Second, Fourth, and Fifth DCAs upholding them and the First and Third DCAs adopting a case-by-case approach.
“[W]e hold that the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment under Graham is implicated when a juvenile nonhomicide offender’s sentence does not afford any ‘meaningful opportunity to obtain release based on demonstrated maturity and rehabilitation’.. . . Graham requires a juvenile nonhomicide offender. . . to be afforded such an opportunity during his or her natural life,” the decision said. “We conclude that Graham prohibits the state trial courts from sentencing juvenile nonhomicide offenders to prison terms that ensure these offenders will be imprisoned without obtaining a meaningful opportunity to obtain future early release during their natural lives based on their demonstrated maturity and rehabilitation.”
The two Miller decisions dealt with whether that U.S. Supreme Court ruling applied to sentences imposed before that case was decided and whether an earlier state law should apply to those cases instead of the Legislature’s 2014 statute. That earlier law, which the state had argued should now take effect, would allow only two sentences for juveniles convicted of homicide: life without parole and life with no parole for at least 25 years.
The court, in opinions written by Justice Barbara Pariente, said Miller does apply retroactively and those earlier sentences are governed by the 2014 state law, not the earlier statute.
The argument to “revive” the older statute doesn’t apply in Miller cases, Pariente wrote, because, “The purpose of a court applying the principle of statutory revival to cure a constitutional infirmity in a statute is to effectuate legislative intent and avoid judicial rewriting of the statute. But we now know how the Legislature has cured the federal constitutional infirmity in Florida’s juvenile sentencing statutes, providing for individualized consideration prior to the imposition of a life sentence and affording most juvenile offenders an opportunity to obtain future release.”
Further, the older statute relied on parole, and the Legislature has consistently worked to eliminate parole from the state over the past 20 years, she noted.
On whether Miller applies retroactively, Pariente wrote that under the court’s precedents, it must either come from the Florida or U.S. Supreme Court, be constitutional, and constitute “a development of fundamental significance.”
The first two are given, and the third applies because it limits the state’s previous ability to impose life without parole sentences in virtually all homicide cases with juvenile defendants, she wrote.
“The patent unfairness of depriving indistinguishable juvenile offenders of their liberty for the rest of their lives, based solely on when their cases were decided, weighs heavily in favor of applying the Supreme Court’s decision in Miller retroactively,” Pariente wrote.
The opinion went on to find that the appropriate way to review those older sentences is under the statutory guidelines the Legislature approved in 2014 to comply with the Miller ruling.
The law passed that year by the Legislature provides sentence review for all juvenile offenders affected by Miller and Graham that vary in timing and frequency, depending on the severity of the offense. Sentencing reviews will occur 15, 20, or 25 years after the initial sentence, depending on the crime.
Annino, who was co-counsel in one of the Miller cases with Karen Gottlieb and Elliot Scherker, said the decisions in the four cases accommodated both the U.S. Supreme Court and the Legislature’s actions. Students at the Public Interest Law Center did the research for that one case, which was argued by Gottlieb.
“It’s a decision where the Florida Supreme Court respected the separation of powers and turned to the Legislature to determine the right remedy,” he said of the impact of the four decisions. “It also respected the United States Supreme Court because the Supreme Court has been saying for years kids are different.”
Annino said 201 inmates will be affected by the Miller -related decisions. About 129 were affected by the Graham decisions and most of those have already been resentenced, he said.
The court acted in Henry v. Florida, case no. SC12-578, Gridine v. State of Florida, case no. SC12-1223, Falcon v. Florida, case no. SC13-865, and Horsley v Florida and Florida v. Horsley, case nos. SC13-1938 and SC13-2000.
