The Supreme Court is considering in Mathena v.
Malvo whether its decision banning mandatory sentences of life without
parole for juveniles can be used to upend earlier discretionary
life-without-parole sentences imposed on teenagers, reported the ABA Journal.
Lee Boyd Malvo was 17 when he and John Allen
Muhammad—known as the “D.C. snipers”—killed 10 people in a series of shootings
in the Washington, D.C., area in 2002. He was convicted of two counts of
capital murder for shootings that occurred in Fairfax County in Virginia and
given two life sentences.
Malvo was given additional sentences of life in
prison in other proceedings.
The Supreme Court has since held that the Eighth
Amendment limits juvenile punishments, ruling in Miller v. Alabama in
2012 that juveniles cannot receive sentences of life without parole even in
homicide cases and in Montgomery
v. Louisiana in 2016 that its decision in Miller applies
retroactively.
The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at Richmond,
Virginia, heard Malvo’s challenge to the life sentence imposed by Virginia
and decided in
2018 that “even though Malvo’s life-without-parole sentences were fully legal
when imposed, they must now be vacated because the retroactive constitutional
rules for sentencing juveniles adopted subsequent to Malvo’s sentencings were
not satisfied during his sentencings.”
The 4th Circuit vacated Malvo’s terms of life
without parole and remanded for resentencing to determine whether he qualified
as a juvenile offender who may be sentenced to life in prison because his
“crimes reflect permanent incorrigibility” or whether his crimes instead
“reflect the transient immaturity of youth.”
The ABA said in its brief that a ruling by the
Supreme Court that weakens Miller would “undermine the rule of law”
and threaten the juvenile justice reforms state legislatures and courts have
adopted since the 2012 decision. Twenty-eight states and the District of
Columbia do not sentence juveniles to life without parole or have since banned
the practice.
“A ruling affirming the court of appeals decision
below, however, would be consistent not only with the rule of law, but also
with the ABA policy of supporting juvenile justice,” according to the brief.
“For over 40 years, the ABA has worked to ensure appropriate protections for
juvenile defendants when transferred to the adult criminal justice system and
has taken positions against imposing capital punishment and life without the
possibility of parole on juvenile offenders.”
After promulgating comprehensive standards
for juvenile justice in 1980, the ABA adopted policies that opposed
capital punishment for anyone under the age of 18 who committed a crime and
affirmed its position that “children are different,” the brief says.
The ABA also filed amicus briefs in several cases
concerning the juvenile justice system, including Miller and Montgomery.
Randall Mathena, the warden of Virginia’s
high-security Red Onion State Prison, appealed the 4th Circuit decision in
Malvo’s case to the Supreme Court. He said in the cert
petition that the Supreme Court of Virginia has “adopted a
diametrically opposed interpretation of Montgomery.”
“The Supreme Court of Virginia acknowledged that
prohibiting discretionary life sentences for juvenile homicide offenders may be
the next step in this Court’s Eighth Amendment jurisprudence, but it concluded
that both Montgomery and Miller‘addressed mandatory life
sentences without possibility of parole,’” he wrote.
Oral arguments in the case are scheduled for Oct.
16.
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