Commonwealth v. Felder
| Decision Date | 23 February 2022 |
| Docket Number | 18 EAP 2018 |
| Citation | 269 A.3d 1232 |
| Parties | COMMONWEALTH of Pennsylvania, Appellee v. Michael FELDER, Appellant |
| Court | Pennsylvania Supreme Court |
Karl Baker, Esq., Bradley Steven Bridge, Esq., Defender Association of Philadelphia, Marsha Levick, Esq., Juvenile Law Center, for Appellant.
Emily Patricia Daly, Esq., Lawrence Jonathan Goode, Esq., James Joseph Rathz, Esq., Nancy L. Winkelman, Esq., Philadelphia District Attorney's Office, for Appellee.
Ronald Eisenberg, Esq., Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General, 16th Floor, Strawberry Square, Harrisburg, PA, for Amicus Curiae Attorney General of Pennsylvania.
OPINION
Over the past two decades, in a series of Eighth Amendment cases applying the Cruel and Unusual Punishments Clause,2 the United States Supreme Court consistently has held that sentencing an offender who was under eighteen years old at the time of the crime raises special constitutional considerations. Of particular consequence in this line of cases were Miller v. Alabama , 567 U.S. 460, 132 S.Ct. 2455, 183 L.Ed.2d 407 (2012), which prohibited mandatory life sentences for juvenile homicide offenders, and Montgomery v. Louisiana , 577 U.S. 190, 136 S.Ct. 718, 193 L.Ed.2d 599 (2016), which held Miller applied retroactively to cases on collateral appeal. In the wake of these decisions, hundreds of defendants who committed murder as a juvenile and were imprisoned under Pennsylvania's former mandatory-life-without-parole sentencing scheme had to be resentenced.
For our part, in Commonwealth v. Batts , 640 Pa. 401, 163 A.3d 410 (2017) (" Batts II "), we exercised "our constitutional power of judicial administration to devise a procedure for the implementation of the Miller and Montgomery decisions in Pennsylvania." Id . at 451 (internal quotations omitted). Among other things, we adopted a presumption against the imposition of a sentence of life without parole for juveniles and imposed on the Commonwealth the burden of proving, beyond a reasonable doubt, that a juvenile offender is incapable of rehabilitation. See id . at 459. We determined these procedures were necessary to effectuate what we believed then was the central mandate of Miller and Montgomery : that "for a life-without-parole sentence to be constitutionally valid, the sentencing court must find that the juvenile offender is permanently incorrigible and that rehabilitation would be impossible." Id . Still, even after establishing this comprehensive set of legal criteria to guide juvenile sentencings, other questions remained.
We granted review in this case to consider one such issue: whether a discretionary term-of-years sentence may be so long as to amount to a de facto life sentence, thereby triggering the substantive and procedural protections afforded by Miller and its progeny.
Before we could resolve that issue, however, the High Court decided Jones v. Mississippi , ––– U.S. ––––, 141 S.Ct. 1307, 209 L.Ed.2d 390 (2021), which severely narrowed the holdings of Miller and Montgomery as previously understood by many courts, including this one. Upon careful review of this new guidance, we are constrained to conclude our decision in Batts II has largely been abrogated. We further conclude Jones is dispositive of the issue presented here. As we will explain below, pursuant to the reasoning in Jones , even if a term-of-years sentence amounts to a de facto life sentence, Miller provides no viable avenue for relief. Accordingly, we affirm appellant's judgment of sentence.
Before discussing the facts, we start with a review of the relevant precedent. In 2005, the United States Supreme Court began to place various constitutional limits on sentencing juveniles who had been convicted of serious criminal offenses.3 First, in Roper v. Simmons , 543 U.S. 551, 578, 125 S.Ct. 1183, 161 L.Ed.2d 1 (2005), it concluded the Eighth Amendment forbids capital punishment for murderers who were under eighteen at the time of their crimes. Next, in Graham v. Florida , 560 U.S. 48, 82, 130 S.Ct. 2011, 176 L.Ed.2d 825 (2010), the Court held the Eighth Amendment prohibits life without parole for juvenile offenders who did not commit homicide. Then in Miller in 2012, the Court barred mandatory sentencing schemes for juveniles convicted of homicide, concluding such sentences violate the principle of proportionality inherent to the Eighth Amendment. Miller , 567 U.S. at 489, 132 S.Ct. 2455.4 Four years later, in Montgomery , the Court held Miller announced a substantive rule of constitutional law that applies retroactively to cases on collateral review. Montgomery , 577 U.S. at 212, 136 S.Ct. 718.
Our opinion in Batts II came on the heels of these decisions and the General Assembly's enactment of a new sentencing statute for juveniles convicted of first- and second-degree murder after June 24, 2012 — the day before Miller was decided. See 18 Pa.C.S. § 1102.1(a), (c).5 We began our analysis by addressing the appropriate level of scrutiny for appellate review of a non-mandatory sentence of life without parole imposed upon a juvenile. See Batts II , 163 A.3d at 434. This was critical, we explained, because the distinction between a claim challenging the discretionary aspects of a sentence, as opposed to its legality, "also encompasses matters of issue preservation, this Court's jurisdiction to decide the question presented, and the level of deference the reviewing court must give to the decision of the sentencing court." Id . Ultimately, after conducting an extensive review of the High Court's Eighth Amendment precedent, we resolved that "in the absence of the sentencing court reaching a conclusion ... that the defendant will forever be incorrigible, without any hope for rehabilitation, a life-without-parole sentence imposed on a juvenile is illegal, as it is beyond the court's power to impose." Id . at 435. In other words, we interpreted the High Court's decisions in Miller and Montgomery as "permit[ting] the imposition of a life-without parole sentence upon a juvenile offender only if the crime committed is indicative of the offender's permanent incorrigibility; that the crime was not the result of the unfortunate yet transient immaturity endemic of all juveniles." Id . (internal quotations and citations omitted; emphasis in original); see also id . ("[F]or a sentence of life without parole to be proportional as applied to a juvenile murderer, the sentencing court must first find, based on competent evidence, that the offender is entirely unable to change.").
We reiterated this understanding when we proceeded to consider the legality of Batts's sentence de novo , and held it was illegal. Initially, we recognized there was "no question that the sentencing court thoroughly and completely reviewed the record and thoughtfully considered the testimony presented at the resentencing hearing" before imposing a discretionary life-without-parole sentence. Id. at 437 (footnote omitted); see also id . at 424 () (footnote omitted).6 Nevertheless, we held this was not enough to withstand constitutional scrutiny. In our judgment, the sentencing court had "overlooked the main premise" of the High Court's juvenile sentencing jurisprudence and impermissibly overrode its repeated admonitions "that juvenile first-degree murderers are presumptively less culpable than their adult counterparts and, as such, should be sentenced differently." Id . at 437. Thus, notwithstanding the court's finding that Batts's crime was not the result of unfortunate yet transient immaturity, because the court also opined that "there remained a possibility that Batts could be rehabilitated[,]" we held a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole was illegally "disproportionate under Miller and Montgomery [.]" Batts II , 163 A.3d at 436, 439.
Our task in Batts II did not end there. We also recognized that "[d]espite the sentencing court's best efforts ..., the lack of procedural safeguards resulted in it failing to properly apply the law to Batts’[s] resentencing." Id . at 451. Moreover, we observed that, at that time, there remained several hundred individuals in Pennsylvania prisons serving what we then believed were illegal life-without-parole sentences awaiting resentencing. See id . at 450. For those reasons, and because "[t]he General Assembly has not taken any appreciable steps to create a separate sentencing statute or to revise existing law so that it applies to juveniles convicted of first-[ or second-]degree murder prior to Miller [,]" we determined an "exercise of our constitutional authority [wa]s required to set forth the manner in which resentencing will proceed in the courts of this Commonwealth." Id . at 450-51. And since we sought to devise only a procedural framework for implementing Miller and Montgomery ’s substantive mandate, we reasoned that such power "falls squarely within our constitutional authority." Id . at 449 ; see PA. CONST. art. V, § 10 (c) ().
Pursuant to that power we approved a medley of protective procedural measures advanced by Batts and his amici . First, we determined "a faithful application of the holding in Miller , as clarified in Montgomery , requires the creation of a presumption against sentencing a juvenile offender to life in prison without the possibility of parole." Id . at 452. Second, based on "the definitive language used by" the High Court's precedents, we concluded "that to overcome...
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