Life Without Possibility of Release Not Unconstitutional When Imposed Upon Juvenile; Another Batson Claim is Rejected.

State v. Martin, Minn.S.Ct., 10/8/2009.  A jury convicted Mr. Martin of first degree premeditated murder, and crime committed for the benefit of a gang; the court sentenced him on the premeditated murder conviction to life without possibility of release.  Mr. Martin was seventeen at the time of the offense. 

Mr. Martin asked the appellate court to reconsider its holding in State v. Chambers, 589 N.W.2d 466 (Minn. 1999) that a sentence of a juvenile to life without possibility of release did not violate the Eight Amendment’s proscription against cruel and unusual punishment.  Mr. Martin pointed to the 2005 Opinion of the United States Supreme Court, Roper v. Simmons, 542 U.S. 551 (2005), which held that the execution of juveniles under the age of eighteen is cruel and unusual punishment.  The Minnesota Supreme Court declines to extend Roper to life without possibility of release, in large part because of dicta in Roper that life without possibility of release was a more “palatable alternative to the juvenile death penalty.”  There are, in the United States, an astonishingly 2,484 juvenile offenders who are serving a sentence of life without possibility of release.  There is not a single juvenile, not one, serving such a sentence anywhere else in the world.

Whether life without benefit of release constitutes cruel and unusual punishment for a juvenile is presently before the U.S. Supreme Court on a cert petition out of Kentucky:  Phon v. Kentucky.

Over his objection, the district court tried Mr. Martin jointly with one of his codefendants.  The appellate court conducted its own review of the joinder ruling – a rather soft one at that - and upheld it, finding no substantial prejudice. The appellate court noted, among other things, that both defendants were charged with the same crimes (although not an intricate or complicated crime) and the evidence against them was virtually identical. 

Next up, a Batson challenge.  The prosecutor struck Black juror 43, who had expressed concerns about how African Americans are treated in the criminal justice system – he opined that the system was unfair to African Americans –; and who had opined that a cousin of his had been wrongly convicted of something.  All the same, though, juror 43 said he could be fair.  Perhaps, but not on this jury.  The trial court first denied the state’s peremptory challenge, but then reversed its ruling.  Justice Page, dissenting, points out that the court’s own Task Force on Racial Bias had reached the same conclusion, that minority citizens perceive that the court system is biased against them.  Justice Page, joined by Justice Paul Anderson, would have reversed the conviction and remanded for a new trial.

There were multiple claims of prosecutorial misconduct, all of which the appellate court dismissed.

There is a companion case, State v. Jackson, with much the same issues and outcome, but without the juvenile life without possibility of release issue.