As noted earlier, each state is sovereign and establishes its own laws.

Recent Legal Decisions

If an individual wants to appeal their matter, they must first go through the state courts. Then, once they’ve exhausted all their state appeals, they can seek remedy through the federal courts, provided Constitutional laws apply. As the Constitution is the nation’s supreme law, all states must comply.

The United State Supreme Court decision in Miller v. Alabama 567 U.S. 460 (2012) held that mandatory LWOP imposed on juvenile defendants violated the Constitution’s Eighth Amendment’s protection against cruel and unusual punishment. It consolidated two similar matters: the title case and Jackson v. Hobbs, an Arkansas case, involving two individuals who committed crimes when they were fourteen years old. Evan Miller and a friend smoked marijuana and drank alcohol with a neighbor. They then robbed and beat the neighbor with a baseball bat and set fire to his trailer to destroy evidence. The neighbor died as a result of the fire and his injures. Alabama tried Miller as an adult and when a jury found him guilty, the court enforced a mandatory LWOP.

Kuntrell Jackson was also fourteen years old when he and two other teenagers robbed a video store. Jackson initially remained outside but entered shortly before one of his friends shot and killed the store clerk. Arkansas charged Jackson as an adult with capital felony and imposed a mandated LWOP.

Justice Elena Kagan, who wrote the Supreme Court decision noted, “mandatory life without parole for a juvenile precludes consideration of his chronological age, immaturity, impetuosity, and failure to appreciate risks and consequences…it prevents taking into account the family and home environment that surrounds him…and from which he extricates himself…no matter how brutal or dysfunctional.” The decision, however, failed to ban all juvenile, homicide LWOP and that the system must differentiate between momentary immaturity and uncommon “irreparable corruption.”

Four years later, in Montgomery v. Louisiana, 577 U.S. __ (2016), the United States Supreme Court considered whether Miller must be applied retroactively. When Henry Montgomery was seventeen, a truant officer caught him. When the officer frisked him, he shot and killed the officer. After his initial trial, the court sentenced him to death, but he was retried because “public prejudice had prevented a fair trial.” His second trial resulted in a LWOP, which did not allow a sentencing phase or the opportunity to introduce mitigating evidence. Justice Kennedy, who wrote the decision, determined that the Constitution required retroactive application of Miller’s prohibition and mandatory LWOP sentences for juveniles violated the Eighth Amendment. While he did not oppose LWOP for juveniles, he said that the require individualized sentencing and determined that all states must either re-sentence offenders given LWOP as minors or offer them parole. Montgomery is expected to impact up to 2,300 cases nationwide.

Back to Pennsylvania

Senator Street’s bill (SB942) would allow an individual who received LWOP to become eligible for parole after serving fifteen years. One of his goals is to end LWOP, specifically for juveniles convicted under felony murder laws (Pennsylvania prisons house over 500 such inmates). He is also concerned about another category of murderers, the kind of which would normally be eligible for parole due to extenuating circumstances (e.g. a battered wife who kills her abusive husband out of self-defense), but received mandatory LWOP. His bill does not create a right to parole, so it does not set free the most dangerous inmates. The Pennsylvania Board of Probation and Parole would retain the power the review parole eligibility.

Senator Street also pointed out that it costs about $42,000 per year just to house a prisoner and that the state spends about $33 million a year just to maintain those serving LWOP felony murders. So, as prisoners age and their medical needs increase, the average per year cost will to about

$70,000 to $80,000 a year. Considering that that LWOP inmates are the least likely to recidivate, instituting parole for them offers tremendous taxpayer savings.

Representative Dawkins’ bill (HB135) would is extremely similar and would also abolish LWOP in Pennsylvania

Two Sides to Every Story: LWOP as a Death Penalty Alternative

The death penalty has always been a contentious subject with people holding extreme views on either side. Many who morally oppose the death penalty consider LWOP a preferable choice. They believe it avoids the risk of executing innocent people.

A California coalition of wrongfully convicted individuals, law enforcement officials, and surviving members of murder victims twice attempted to convince voters to repeal the death penalty and replace it with LWOP. Members felt the state’s death penalty system was “costly and broken” and twice, in 2012 and 2016, launched a SAFE (“Savings, Accountability, and Full Enforcement”) voter act to ensure no innocent person was ever executed. Both times, voters defeated the act, believing the death penalty should continue for the most heinous killers.

Death row inmates opposed the measure. LWOP eliminated their rights to appeal their sentences, which instantly deprived them of hope. One death row inmate wrote an op-ed and said that he’d rather be executed than have his rights to appeal taken away.

Two Sides to Every Story: Survivors of Victims Support LWOP

Some families of murder victims like LWOP. For them, it forever imprisons the criminal who killed their loved one and eliminates the decades long appeals process that usually accompanies death sentences. In some cases, district attorneys agree to plea bargains, with victim’ families support, that allow offenders to plead guilty to crimes with LWOP and avoid death penalties.

Two Sides to Every Story: The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act

History has not been kind to Bill Clinton or anyone else who supported the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, especially because of the racial disparities caused by the sentencing reforms, “three-strikes” rule, and racial issues during its enactment. Hillary Clinton suffered, too, for her use of the term “super predator.”

The act, however, deserves a second look. It also provided:

• funding for programs to address crime prevention
• funding for drug treatment
• funding for education and jobs
• grants to combat violence against women; fund state efforts to arrest and prosecute those who victimize women, offer rape prevention, counseling services, and the arrest of offenders in domestic violence cases.
• grants to make improvements to transit systems with surveillance lines and emergency phone systems
• funding for handgun requirements to enable states to identify ineligible firearms purchasers and conduct interstate background checks on individuals who worked with children
• grants develop or improve the capability to analyze DNA in a forensic laboratory.
• funding for rape crisis centers
• funding to reduce the sexual abuse of runaway, homeless, and street youth

The media, politicians, and many others have asked everyone associated with this act, including Vice President Joe Biden, to apologize for this act.

The act, as all things, was part of its time. This doesn’t excuse its impact or mean that the problem shouldn’t be resolved. It means, as with all things, it should be considered individually, applying all extenuating circumstances. It took the Supreme Court nearly thirty years to figure that out.

One Other Case to Consider

Right now, society and opinion seem to be leaning toward abolishing LWOP and offering parole to offenders the courts imposed such sentences, especially those who committed crimes when they were juveniles. One case may cause some to pause, even if just for a moment.

Lee Boyd Malvo, better known as the D.C. or Beltway Sniper, was seventeen years old when he John Allen Muhammad shot and killed ten people and seriously wounded three others during the weeks between September 5, 2002 and October 22, 2002, in what Virginia officials called “one of the most notorious strings of terrorist acts in modern American history.” Muhammad received the death penalty for his crimes and died by lethal injection in 2009. Malvo pled guilty and received LWOP.

Malvo appealed his case to the United States Supreme Court and, under Miller, claims his sentence deserves review. The Supreme Court agreed and, in March 2019, agreed to hear his case in its upcoming October session.

The Danger of Broad-Based Solutions to Problems

Malvo demonstrates, as history constantly teaches, that there is usually never one solution to a certain problem. What’s popular during the moment leads society to discuss resolutions. Those resolutions, however, have far-reaching consequences, which we cannot see or predict. And, what we think is important at the time, may be inconsequential later.

If even just a tiny percentage of released LWOP inmates go on to commit violent crimes, some will no doubt consider offering them parole a mistake and we will be right back on the opposite side. History’s pendulum usually always swings back the other way.

Images provided via Google

In 2017, Pennsylvania State Senator Sharif Street and State Representative Jason Dawkins introduced bills that would abolish prisons sentences of life without parole. State legislators nationwide are introducing similar bills. The issue isn’t limited to Pennsylvania. It’s a complicated nationwide issue that requires understanding of sentencing laws, political history, the Constitution, Supreme Court decisions, racial disparity, and multiple viewpoints.

What is Life-Without-Parole?

When the court sentences an individual to life-without-parole (LWOP), it means that person will spend the rest of their life in prison without any ability to appeal the sentence. They will never get a chance to leave. They will die in prison.

How Does an Offender Receive LWOP?

Each state has its own laws, both criminal and civil, that all its cities, towns, and districts follow. If an offender commits a crime in one of its cities, towns, or districts, the court in that area, oversees their arrest, conviction, and incarceration. The state legislature establishes the laws and determines the rules and procedures that every jurisdiction follows. While each district and town may have its own set of rules and procedures, it nonetheless adheres to and follows the state’s laws.

State legislators set forth sentencing guidelines for certain crimes. When an offender agrees to plead guilty or if the jury or judge finds them guilty of a that crime, the judge must follow those guidelines when imposing the sentence. The guidelines usually allow the judge to consider factors such as the offender’s age and criminal background. Oftentimes, probation or parole officers and sometimes even independent agencies prepare presentencing reports that investigate the offender’s background and other extenuating circumstances. In many cases, there is a sentencing hearing, even when an offender pleads guilty, and individuals who wish to speak on either the victim’s or offender’s behalf can do so freely. Even the offender is allowed to speak and the judge gets to observe their demeanor and consider whether they regret their crime. In other words, judges have discretion and some leeway when imposing sentences.

Mandatory sentences, on the other hand, are those in which the judge must impose regardless of any extenuating circumstances. There’s no presentence report, no presentencing hearing, nothing to consider, and no leeway. The judge must impose the legislated sentence.

States usually impose LWOPs for habitual criminal behavior or as punishment for a serious offense, usually a capital murder, which is one that immediately subjects the offender to the death penalty. Capital murder typically involves a child, a police officer, or multiple victims. It can also include felony murder, which is an unintended killing that takes place during an intentional crime. For example, three people rob a bank. One robber shoots and kills a police officer. The state will charge the shooter with murder and the other two robbers with felony murder.

Rise of the LWOP

When Vice President George H.W. Bush ran for president against Massachusetts’ Governor Michael Dukakis in 1988, his supporters funded an ad, now renowned as the “Willie Horton Ad,” which focused on a convicted murderer who raped a woman and stabbed her partner after escaping prison while on a state sponsored prison furlough program. Massachusetts lawmakers later prohibited such programs and instead began more heavily implementing LWOP. Other states followed.

In 1994, President Bill Clinton signed the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act. Among other things, it established the “three strikes” rule, which imposed mandatory LWOP for federal offenders with three or more convictions for serious violent felonies or drug trafficking crimes. The bill also granted billions to states that passed “truth-in-sentencing” laws, which required inmates to serve at least eighty-five percent of their sentences.

The “Willie Horton” Ad

Since elections in this nation began, candidates have vowed to get tougher on crime and criminals. Conservative and right-wing leaning individuals generally prefer harsh prison terms and their administrations typically focus on such policies. The public overall favors harsh prison sentences for serious criminals. such as those who commit rape, assault, and serial murder. That harsh offenders can earn good behavior credits and eventually qualify for parole even when sentenced to “life,” can frustrate certain people, regardless of their political predisposition.

Violent crimes and drug abuse rates increased in the 1980s and even juveniles began committing more brutal crimes. The public fell for the ad’s scheme. At certain moments during the 1988 presidential election, Governor Dukakis was ahead of Vice President Bush. Some claim by even seventeen points. That all changed after the “Willie Horton Ad” and many experts credit it for his ultimate landslide election.

The “Willie Horton” ad, even by today’s standards, is one of the most racially antagonistic political ads, as it so obviously promotes white fear of African Americans. (Ann Coulter calls it “Bush’s finest 30 seconds” and Trump, for his re-election is seeking an ad with similar effect). While President George H.W. Bush claimed he had nothing to do with the ad and that his PAC backed it, he nonetheless ran a “revolving door” ad that still played upon racial stereotypes.

The “Three Strikes” Rule

While the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act that Bill Clinton signed applied only to federal crimes, it encouraged states to pass their own mandatory “three strike” laws and impose LWOP. Those state rules eventually saw individuals serving life sentences for crimes such as shoplifting, simple assault, or other violations that would normally result in minimal sentences or even probation.

LWOP Statistics and Racial Disparity

Racial disparity in state and federal sentencing exists even with standard sentencing. African American male sentences are nearly twenty percent longer than white male sentences for similar offenses and African Americans and Latinos offenders face higher incarceration rates and are sentenced to much longer sentences than similarly situated white offenders. Simply recall Brock Turner’s six-month sentence for sexually assaulting an unconscious woman. Turner actually served only three-months.

The disparity grows deeper regarding LWOP. There are more African Americans serving LWOP than those serving parole eligible life sentences. According to the Sentencing Project, as of 2012, out of the 159,520 people serving life sentences, 49,081 were serving LWOP (thirty-five percent). Such represented an 11.8% rise since 2008.

According to the National Center for Youth Law, in 2006, there were more than 2,000 offenders serving LWOP for crimes they committed while they were under eighteen years of age. About twenty-six percent of juveniles are sentenced to LWOP for felony murder and fifty-nine percent of juveniles receive LWOP for first-time offenses. At the time, courts nationwide sentenced African American juveniles to LWOP ten times more than white juveniles. In California alone, of the 180 inmates sentenced to LWOP for crimes they committed before they were age eighteen, 158 were African American.

In twenty-six states, anyone convicted of first-degree murder is sentenced to LWOP, even a juvenile. In Pennsylvania, anyone convicted of first or second-degree murder is automatically sentenced to LWOP, including juveniles.

Pennsylvania has the most inmates serving LWOP for crimes they committed as juveniles than any other state (more than 450)

To be continued…

Images provided via google