In a critical decision on Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court gave five Arizona defendants the opportunity to have their sentences reconsidered, delivering a huge blow to Maricopa County's head prosecutor, Republican Bill Montgomery.
We’ve covered Montgomery’s terrible prosecutorial practices here, here, here, and here in the past couple of weeks. The Supreme Court’s Monday decision to reverse five sentences that his office has fought for tooth and nail is a major defeat for him, just one week before he faces a tough re-election fight.
The cases were decided in light of Montgomery v. Louisiana, which we've discussed extensively here and here. (Note that, confusingly, the Montgomery case is unrelated to County Attorney Montgomery). From our July article related to the case:
[In] January's Montgomery vs. Louisiana decision, the Supreme Court all but outlawed [sentencing juveniles to life without parole (JLWOP)]
Montgomery made retroactive Miller v. Alabama, which ruled in 2012 that mandatory life without parole sentences for juveniles violate the Eighth Amendment's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment. Neither ruling was all-encompassing—Montgomery only addressed statutorily mandated sentences, as did its predecessor. But Montgomery not only gave hope to thousands of people serving juvenile LWOP, it also underscored just how rare such sentences should be in the future. "[A] lifetime in prison is a disproportionate sentence for all but the rarest of children, those whose crimes reflect ‘irreparable corruption,'" said the court.
The ruling in Montgomery requires prosecutors to re-sentence the mandatory JLWOP cases in their jurisdiction.
Interestingly enough, the five defendants at issue in the Court's Monday decision were not sentenced to JLWOP (juvenile life without parole) mandatorily. Still, the court decided to reverse their punishment and offer them an opportunity to be re-sentenced.
The reason why can be found in Justice Sotomayor's concurrence.
[Montgomery clarified that the rule in Miller] draws “a line between children whose crimes reflect transient immaturity and those rare children whose crimes reflect irreparable corruption” and allows for the possibility “that life without parole could be a proportionate sentence [only] for the latter kind of juvenile offender.” The petitioners in these cases were sentenced to life without the possibility of parole for crimes they committed before they turned 18. A grant, vacate, and remand of these cases in light of Montgomery permits the lower courts to consider whether these petitioners’ sentences comply with the substantive rule governing the imposition of a sentence of life without parole on a juvenile offender.
The Court's conscious decision to underscore the importance of "irreparable corruption" in JLWOP sentences is another indication that SCOTUS may be headed toward outlawing JLWOP all together.
Justices Alito and Thomas disagreed. In his dissent, Justice Alito made clear that he found all of these defendants to be irreparably corrupt.
It is true that the Miller Court… opined that “life without parole is excessive for all but ‘the rare juvenile offender whose crime reflects irreparable corruption,’” but the record in the cases at issue provides ample support for the conclusion that these “children” fall into that category.
(The quotation marks around children are presumably meant to acknowledge that the five defendants were children at the time of the crime but are not anymore.) Alito continued:
In short, the Arizona courts have already evaluated these sentences under Miller, and their conclusions are eminently reasonable. It is not clear why this Court is insisting on a do-over, or why it expects the results to be any different the second time around.
But what Sotomayor seems to be saying is that the standards for imparting JLWOP must be higher than they currently are. Why does the Court hope that the results will be different? Because they hope that the lower court's analysis will be different.
The five cases were decided summarily, meaning the Court reversed the sentences without hearing oral arguments or producing a signed opinion. Even Justice Sotomayor's decision to write a concurrence indicates that SCOTUS will continue to demand that a defendant's age has been properly considered and will fight to ensure that only defendants found to truly be irreparably corrupt will be sentenced to life without parole for crimes they committed as juveniles.
Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery's office tried to deny each of these five defendants an opportunity at re-sentencing. In fact, prosecutors in his office fought against these men repeatedly in court. On Monday, Sotomayor and the majority of the Court finally defeated their efforts. While this doesn't guarantee that the men will get more reasonable sentences, it does put County Attorney Montgomery on notice.
It’s yet another blow for the Republican endorsed by the notorious Sheriff Joe Arpaio. He's facing a tough re-election fight next Tuesday, against Democrat Diego Rodriguez. Yet Montgomery still wasted taxpayer money to avoid even giving these men an opportunity at re-sentencing. Is that who we want running the fourth biggest prosecutor's office in the nation?