Re-sentencing Juveniles

At 10:30 AM, January 25, 2016 the United States Supreme Court ruled, in Montgomery v Louisiana, that no juvenile could be sentenced to a mandatory sentence of life without parole, regardless of the date of the offense. This vacates Pennsylvania’s decision in Comm. v. Cunningham that juveniles, sentenced before June 26, 2012, could be confined under a mandatory life without parole.

The Montgomery ruling is that, “Teague v. Lane, 489 U. S. 288, set forth a framework for the retroactive application of a new constitutional rule to convictions that were final when the new rule was announced. It recognized that courts must give retroactive effect to new watershed procedural rules and to substantive rules of constitutional law. Substantive constitutional rules include ‘rules forbidding criminal punishment of certain primary conduct’ and ‘rules prohibiting a certain category of punishment for a class of defendants because of their status or offense.’”

Pennsylvania currently has 524 juveniles serving life without parole. That’s twice the number of the next state, Louisiana, which has 210. At the September 22, 2008 hearings, Senator Stewart Greenleaf (R-Montgomery) reported that 69% of the juveniles currently serving life sentences never held a weapon, never confronted a victim, and may not even have known that a crime had been committed. The 2012 hearings made similar findings. This means that at least 69% of the people serving juvenile life without parole were convicted under the Felony Homicide Rule. “Felony murder is the legal doctrine that all parties involved in the commission of a felony in which a person is killed are held accountable for that death, regardless of how the death occurred or whether it was intentional.”

The SR 304 Juvenile Justice Advisory Committee (2014), published Juvenile Delinquency and Dependency: Juvenile Act Revisions and Review of Juvenile Life Without Parole, (July 2015). http://jsg.legis.state.pa.us/resources/documents/ftp/publications/2015-414-Final%20JAAC%20Report%207.31.15%20240pm.pdf Their report recommended (p 40 ff) that each element of an offense should be separately proven as to each defendant. An alternative has been proposed, in HB 892 (2015), that juvenile accomplices should be eligible for a re-sentencing hearing after the trial. These alternatives are currently in front of Pennsylvanians.

The District Attorneys Association met on February 4, 2016 and determined that Montgomery v Louisiana would best be implemented by the sentencing court. Neither the Board of Pardons, nor the Board of Probation and Parole, are designed to do what the case mandates. Several counties have already implemented the decision.

In addition, the Governor appointed the Pennsylvania Committee for the Analysis and Reform of Our Criminal System. His charge was: “What I want is a complete study of our criminal process to determine whether there are defects in the system”. The Committee functions as a Non-Governmental Organization introducing legislation and raising awareness across our Commonwealth.

(Resentencing Juveniles held its 2016 Annual Conference at the Pitt Law School Monday, March 14. Its focus was the use of the felony homicide rule in juvenile sentencing. Several papers were submitted and will be published in the 2016 Final Report. Speakers included: Tiffany Sizemore-Thompson, Duquesne Law School; Chaz P. Arnett, University of Pittsburgh School of Law; and Brenda Emerick, Global Kindness Revolution. Over 30 juveniles and their families provided typed or handwritten letters as part of the 2008 Judiciary Committee Hearing. Letters such as these, explaining how the juvenile came to be sentenced to Juvenile Life Without Parole, is considered part of the Conference material.)

Rev.Dr. Roger L. Thomas is on the Chair of the Pennsylvania Committee for the Analysis & Reform of Our Criminal System

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