Court Recognizes Retroactivity of Miller v. Alabama, Imposes Life Sentence With Possibility of Release After 30 Years For Juvenile Offender Whose Sentence Was Final Before Miller

Jackson v. State, Minn.S.Ct., 8/3/2016.  The state charged Mr. Jackson with premeditated murder; he was seventeen years old.  A jury convicted him, and the trial court imposed a life sentence without possibility of release under a statute that required that result without exception.

After Mr. Jackson's conviction and sentence became final the U.S. Supreme Court held in Miller v. Alabama, ___ U.S. ___, 132 S.Ct. 2455 (2012), that mandatory imposition of life without possibility of release is unconstitutional as applied to juveniles under the Eighth Amendment.  In Chambers v. State, 831 N.W.2d 311 (Minn. 2013), and in Roman Nose v. State, 845 N.W.2d 193 (Minn.2014), the Minnesota Supreme Court held that Miller v. Alabama, was not retroactive.  Earlier this year the U.S. Supreme Court held that Miller v. Alabama is retroactive, overruling both Chambers and Roman Nose.  Montgomery v. Louisiana, ___ U.S. ___, 136 S.Ct. 718 (2016).

Justice G. Barry Anderson had joined the opinion in Chambers, and had written a concurring opinion in Roman Nose wherein he wished that SCOTUS would answer the retroactivity question.   With none of the dissenters in Chambers and Roman Nose - Justices Page and Paul Anderson - still on the court, Justice G. Barry Anderson gets to write the obituaries of these two opinions, one supposes because he kept wishing that SCOTUS would answer the retroactivity question.

Jackson's mandatory life sentence without possibility of release clearly violates Miller.  So, the meat of the opinion is determining what the remedy is.  The state argued that the remedy was to remand the case back to the trial court for a "Miller hearing." Without dissent, however, the court does remand the case, but with instructions to impose a life sentence with possibility of release after serving thirty years.  This is the "last text standing" before the legislature enacted the now unconstitutional mandatory life without possibility of release statute for juvenile offenders. The court simply thought that too much time had passed - 10 years for Jackson - for any kind of meaningful "Miller hearing" to occur:

A Miller-hearing remedy provides inadequate relief in a retroactive context for a juvenile such as Jackson, whose sentence was imposed nearly 10 years ago. Based on the significant passage of time since Jackson’s 2006 sentencing, holding a fair and meaningful Miller hearing is not possible. 

Concluding, the Justice stated:

We hold that Minn. Stat. §§ 609.106, subd. 2, 244.05, subds. 4-5 (2014), are severed as applied to Jackson and any juvenile offenders who received mandatory LWOR sentences that were final before the Miller rule was announced. The most recent constitutional versions of those statutes are revived. Based on Jackson’s conviction of first-degree premeditated murder, the revived statutes require a sentence of life imprisonment with the possibility of release after 30 years, Minn. Stat. §§ 609.106, subd. 2, 244.05, subds. 4-5 (2004). Therefore, we vacate Jackson’s LWOR sentence and remand to the district court for imposition of a sentence of life imprisonment with the possibility of release after 30 years

Just how this will play out for the other juvenile offenders who received mandatory life without possibility of release sentences that were final before the Miller rule was announced remains to be seen. The state has shown no willingness to abandon the preservation of these unconstitutional sentences and so likely each juvenile's case will have to be litigated separately.