State v. Slocumb

• Decision Date: 03 April 2019
• Docket Number: Opinion No. 27877,Appellate Case No. 2015-002031
• Court: South Carolina Supreme Court
• Parties: STATE of South Carolina, Respondent, v. Conrad Lamont SLOCUMB, Petitioner.

426 S.C. 297

827 S.E.2d 148

STATE of South Carolina, Respondent,

v.Conrad Lamont SLOCUMB, Petitioner.

Appellate Case No. 2015-002031

Opinion No. 27877

Supreme Court of South Carolina.

Heard December 12, 2018

Filed April 3, 2019

Tara Dawn Shurling, of the Law Office of Tara Dawn Shurling, P.A., of Columbia, for Petitioner.

Attorney General Alan Wilson and Assistant Attorney General Mark R. Farthing, both of Columbia, for Respondent.

Chief Appellate Defender Robert Micheal Dudek, Appellate Defender Susan Barber Hackett, Appellate Defender Laura Ruth Baer, all of Columbia, for Amicus Curiae, South Carolina Division of Appellate Defense.

John H. Blume, III and Lindsey Sterling Vann, both of Columbia, for Amicus Curiae, Justice 360 & Cornell Juvenile Justice Project.

Executive Director James Hugh Ryan, III, of Columbia, for Amicus Curiae, South Carolina Commission on Indigent Defense.

Joseph M. McCulloch, Jr., of Columbia, and Seth P. Waxman, of Washington, DC, for Amicus Curiae, The South Carolina State Conference of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Alexandra V.B. Gordon, Aidan Synnott, Anne O'Toole and Agbeko C. Petty, all of New York, NY, for Amicus Curiae, South Carolina Public Defender Association and South Carolina Criminal Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

JUSTICE KITTREDGE :

At the age of thirteen, petitioner Conrad Slocumb kidnapped and sexually assaulted a teacher before shooting her in the face and head five times and leaving her for dead. Three years later, following his guilty plea for the first set of crimes, he escaped from custody and raped and robbed another woman in a brutal manner before being apprehended again. For these two sets of crimes, Slocumb received an aggregate 130-year sentence due to the individual sentences being run consecutively.

Following rounds of direct appeals and collateral proceedings, Slocumb now contends an aggregate 130-year sentence for multiple offenses committed on multiple dates violates the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution, as extrapolated from the principles set forth in the United States Supreme Court's (Supreme Court) decisions in Graham v. Florida¹ and Miller v. Alabama ,² among others. We acknowledge ostensible merit in Slocumb's argument, for it is arguably a reasonable extension of Graham and Miller . Yet precedent dictates that only the Supreme Court may extend and enlarge the protections guaranteed by the United States Constitution. Once the Supreme Court has drawn a line in the sand, the authority to redraw that line and broaden federal constitutional protections is limited to our nation's highest court. Because the decision to expand the reach and protections of the Eighth Amendment lies exclusively with the Supreme Court, we are constrained to deny Slocumb relief.

I.

In 1992, when he was thirteen years old, Slocumb accosted a high school teacher in the school parking lot and forced her into her car at gunpoint, directing her to drive to a wooded area. Slocumb unsuccessfully attempted to force the teacher into the woods before grabbing her, squeezing her breast, and digitally penetrating her vagina through her clothing. He then shot the teacher in the face and head five times and drove off in her car, leaving her on the side of the road. Miraculously, the teacher survived and identified Slocumb as the perpetrator. Eventually, Slocumb pled guilty to criminal sexual conduct in the first degree (CSC-1st) in exchange for the remaining charges being nol prossed and was sentenced to thirty years' imprisonment.

Three years later, while returning from an off-site medical visit, Slocumb escaped from custody for a total of forty-five minutes. In the short time he was free, he ran to a nearby apartment complex, located a lone woman, and forced his way into her apartment. Once inside, Slocumb claimed he had a gun and demanded the woman turn over her car keys, money, jewelry, cigarettes, beer, and a change of clothes. After the woman complied with his demands, Slocumb forced her to undress, said "I'm going to have some sex," and, after reminding her he was armed, proceeded to rape her. The woman nonetheless continued to resist, whereupon Slocumb forced her to stand and touch her toes as he raped her from behind. After the rape, Slocumb left the apartment and was apprehended in the parking lot by law enforcement.

After a jury trial and multiple rounds of direct appeals, post-conviction relief applications, and resentencing hearings, Slocumb was ultimately sentenced to life without parole for burglary in the first degree, thirty years' imprisonment for CSC-1st, thirty years' imprisonment for kidnapping, fifteen years' imprisonment for robbery (as a lesser-included offense to armed robbery), and five years' imprisonment for escape, the sentences to be served consecutively.

Subsequently, in 2010, the United States Supreme Court handed down its decision in Graham v. Florida , in which it held the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibited courts from sentencing a juvenile offender convicted of a nonhomicide offense to life without parole. 560 U.S. at 82, 130 S.Ct. 2011. Slocumb immediately filed a federal habeas action, requesting his life sentence for burglary be vacated pursuant to Graham . The federal district court granted him relief and remanded the case to the circuit court for resentencing on the burglary charge alone.

On remand, Slocumb requested the circuit court not only resentence him on the burglary charge, but also vacate the remaining eighty-year aggregate sentence for the other crimes and resentence him on all of the charges in accordance "with the spirit and intent of" Graham and Miller . Acknowledging that a de facto life sentence³ is not expressly prohibited under Graham or Miller , Slocumb invited the circuit court to follow the spirit of Graham and Miller and find his aggregate term-of-years sentence was impermissible under the Eighth Amendment. In addition, Slocumb asserted even if his new burglary sentence were run concurrently to his eighty-year aggregate sentence for the remaining crimes, the eighty-year sentence would also not provide him with a meaningful opportunity for release, as specified in Graham , because he would be incarcerated long past his projected life expectancy.

In response, the State stressed Graham specifically allowed a state to keep a juvenile offender incarcerated for his entire natural life span when the offender failed to demonstrate maturity or rehabilitation. The State informed the circuit court that it had been contacted by the Department of Corrections (DOC) and told that Slocumb, as an adult in his thirties, was an enormous "security risk" with a "horrible" behavioral record, including 218 infractions over a sixteen-year period for actions such as attacking corrections workers, possession of a weapon, and mutilation. According to the State, the DOC's unsolicited contact was the first time in at least twenty-three years the agency had felt it necessary to specifically advise the State of the potential security risk posed by an inmate.⁴ The State also informed the circuit court Slocumb had failed to complete any educational courses or enroll in any rehabilitative programs while incarcerated.⁵ The State argued Slocumb's poor disciplinary record and failure to attempt to rehabilitate himself fell squarely within Graham 's language allowing a juvenile offender convicted of a nonhomicide offense to be imprisoned for his natural life span. Stated differently, Slocumb's adult prison record of continuing impulsivity and violence belies the general premises of youth articulated in Roper v. Simmons ,⁶ Graham , and Miller .

Ultimately, the circuit court found the remand instructions from the federal court encompassed only Slocumb's burglary charge. The court then resentenced Slocumb to fifty years' imprisonment on the burglary charge, the sentence to be run consecutively to the eighty years for the remaining charges, resulting in Slocumb facing a 130-year aggregate sentence.

Slocumb appealed, arguing the sentence violated the spirit and letter of Graham , but the court of appeals affirmed. Slocumb then filed a petition for a writ of certiorari with this Court. Because the court of appeals considered only the sentence for burglary in accordance with the limited remand instructions from the federal district court, we denied the petition. However, because the certiorari petition sought review of the entire 130-year sentence, we observed that the constitutionality of the length of Slocumb's aggregate sentence in light of Graham was more appropriately raised to this Court by way of a petition for a writ of certiorari in our original jurisdiction. As a result, Slocumb refiled a petition for a writ of certiorari in the Court's original jurisdiction to address whether an aggregate sentence imposed for multiple nonhomicide offenses committed while Slocumb was a juvenile was the equivalent of a sentence of life without the possibility of parole, and if so, whether the aggregate sentence violated the Eighth Amendment as interpreted by Graham . We granted the petition.

II.

In the past fourteen years, the Supreme Court issued three decisions concerning juvenile sentencing practices:

Roper v. Simmons , Graham v. Florida , and Miller v. Alabama . We begin our analysis with a review of this trilogy of cases.

A.

In the earliest of its three recent decisions, Roper v. Simmons , the Supreme Court held juvenile offenders could not be sentenced to death if they were under the age of eighteen at the time they committed their crimes. 543 U.S. at 568, 578, 125 S.Ct. 1183. Underlying the Supreme Court's holding was its belief that juveniles were fundamentally different from adults, in that they (1) exhibited a lack of maturity and an underdeveloped sense of responsibility, resulting in impetuous and ill-considered actions and decisions; (2) were more susceptible to negative outside influences such as peer...