One would be hard-pressed to identify an area of jurisprudence that has seen more substantial movement in recent years than punishment for juvenile offenders.
Juvenile sentencing began being reshaped by a 2010 case out of Jacksonville, Graham v. Florida.
In Graham, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Eighth Amendment disallows sentences of life in prison for juveniles convicted of non-homicide offenses without “some meaningful opportunity” for future release.
The court concluded criminal procedure laws are flawed if they presume juvenile offenders cannot be rehabilitated.
An opportunity for release, the court instructed, should be based on the offender’s demonstrated maturity and rehabilitation since the offense.
Next came Miller v. Alabama in 2012, which addressed the imposition of life in prison for juveniles convicted of homicide. The U.S. Supreme Court did not categorically bar life sentences in Miller, but stated that a court must “take into account how children are different, and how those differences counsel against irrevocably sentencing them to a lifetime in prison.”
At the time of the Miller ruling, at least 26 states, including Florida, had mandatory life sentencing laws on the books that applied to juvenile offenders.
With life sentences deemed unlawful for non-homicide offenders and questionable for homicide offenders, court systems nationwide began to grapple with whether extraordinarily long sentences (think 50, 60, 70-plus years) amount to “de facto” life sentences.
The Florida Legislature went to work attempting to codify new laws to provide more clarity than that provided by the U.S. Supreme Court in Graham and Miller.
An initial attempt at legislation in our state failed, which would have called for a one-time review after 25 years for juveniles convicted of non-homicide and no review for juveniles convicted of homicide.
A second attempt led to the successful amendment of Section 775.082, which now imposes life sentences on juveniles who kill, intend to kill or attempt to kill if “the court finds that life imprisonment is an appropriate sentence.”
The amended statute went into effect July 1, 2014. In the event a sentencing court finds that life imprisonment is not appropriate, discretion is limited in that 775.082 mandates a sentence of at least 40 years for juveniles who kill, intend to kill or attempt to kill.
The Florida Legislature, in conjunction with Section 775.082, created a possibility for a review of juvenile homicide sentences after 25 years.
Section 921.1402, which also went into effect July 1, 2014, states a juvenile may apply for a sentence review at the 25-year mark as long as the child did not have a prior conviction for a serious felony unconnected to the homicide offense.
A review is available regardless of the initial sentence (40 years to life).
Upon receiving an application, the sentencing court must hold a review hearing to determine whether a sentence modification is appropriate.
If the court finds that the juvenile has been rehabilitated and is “reasonably believed to be fit to reenter society,” it may modify the sentence.
Any modified sentence must include a term of probation of at least five years.
The above legislation was instituted to apply only to sentences handed down after July 1, 2014. Since parole was abolished in 1983, juveniles sentenced to life imprisonment before 2014 were temporarily unaffected.
That was until March of this year, when the Florida Supreme Court ruled that each of those juveniles must be resentenced under the new sentencing scheme.
Justice Barbara Pariente, in Falcon v. Florida, wrote for the majority in favor of retroactive application of Miller due to the “patent unfairness” of non-reviewable life sentences for a class of juvenile offenders only because their cases were decided prior to mid-2014.
Hundreds of juveniles will be re-sentenced across Florida in the coming months.
For any motivated member of The Florida Bar, a juvenile resentencing case would present a valuable pro bono opportunity in a provocative area of the law.
And more importantly, you might give hope to someone who, as a young person, abandoned it.
Contact me at (904) 353-0211 or Whitney Untiedt at Akerman in Miami at (305) 374-5600 if you would like more information.
Brian Coughlin is an attorney with The Bedell firm.