Maryland public defender investigating every juvenile life-without-parole case
Maryland’s Office of the Public Defender’s post-conviction division has launched an effort to investigate all cases of inmates who, as juveniles, were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, following through on the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in 2012 that such sentences violate the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and illegal punishment, the Baltimore Sun reports.
The Youth-Resentencing Project will look for cases it can take to court seeking resentencing based on Miller v. Alabama (PDF), in which Justice Elena Kagan’s majority opinion in the 5-4 decision noted that such sentences for juveniles preclude consideration of “chronological age and its hallmark features—among them, immaturity, impetuosity, and failure to appreciate risks and consequences. It prevents taking into account the family and home environment that surrounds” defendants.
Resentencing of juveniles in such cases has been permitted in at least 12 states, and the decision will affect about 1,500 people now behind bars, according to a story in the September 2015 ABA Journal.
Maryland law permits one post-conviction hearing after appeals have been exhausted. Possible claims include, among other things, constitutional violations. If successful, the petitioner might get a new trial, a corrected sentence or a new sentencing.
“I think I get at least 100 letters a week that I have to respond to,” Becky Feldman, chief of the post-conviction division, told The Sun, concerning all the various matters the offices handles, adding that “They are all entitled to an attorney under the statute, and we only have 19 attorneys to handle all that need. “
Her office now represents 18 men serving sentences of life without the possibility of parole, and the office has a huge backlog of cases, Feldman says. The division is launching an effort to get 100 volunteer attorneys to take at least one post-conviction case pro bono.
In an attempt to push the logic of Miller v. Alabama, a case scheduled for argument at the U.S. Supreme Court next month, Henry Montgomery v. State of Louisiana, concerns whether Miller v. Alabama actually adopts a substantive rule applying retroactively, as well as whether the high court has jurisdiction to decide if Louisiana’s Supreme Court was correct in refusing to apply it retroactively. The ABA filed an amicus brief addressing the first question, saying that it should be viewed as substantive rather than procedural and thus retroactive.
Maryland’s post-conviction division also intends to go further in new cases and argue that life sentences of any kind—including those with the possibility of parole—are unconstitutional, Feldman told the Sun.
