Fletcher v. State
| Decision Date | 12 May 2023 |
| Docket Number | A-11802,2745 |
| Parties | WINONA M. FLETCHER, Appellant, v. STATE OF ALASKA, Appellee. |
| Court | Court of Appeals of Alaska |
Appeal from the Superior Court, Third Judicial District, Anchorage Philip R. Volland, Judge. Trial Court No. 3AN-11-12161 CI
Whitney G. Glover (briefing) and Marcelle K. McDannel (oral argument), Assistant Public Advocates, and Chad Holt, Public Advocate, Anchorage, for the Appellant.
Nancy R. Simel, Assistant Attorney General, Office of Criminal Appeals, Anchorage, and Jahna Lindemuth, Attorney General Juneau, for the Appellee.
Before: Allard, Chief Judge, Wollenberg, Judge, and Suddock, Senior Superior Court Judge. [*]
Beginning in 2005, the United States Supreme Court decided a series of cases that altered the landscape of juvenile sentencing practices. Grounded in the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on "cruel and unusual punishments," these cases culminated with the Court's declaration in Miller v. Alabama that "children are constitutionally different from adults for purposes of sentencing."[1]
In Miller, the Court identified three key characteristics that distinguish children from adults.[2] First, children lack maturity and have an underdeveloped sense of responsibility, "leading to recklessness, impulsivity, and heedless risk-taking."[3]Second, children are more vulnerable to pressure from family and peers and "lack the ability to extricate themselves from horrific, crime-producing settings."[4] And third, a child's character is not as well-formed as an adult's, and as a result, a child's actions are "less likely to be 'evidence of irretrievabl[e] deprav[ity].'"[5] The Court held that these distinctive attributes - which are based on common experience as well as science and social science research - "diminish the penological justifications for imposing the harshest sentences on juvenile offenders, even when they commit terrible crimes."[6]
This case requires us to examine the meaning of these declarations as applied to a fourteen-year-old girl who committed three undeniably terrible crimes and was sentenced to a composite term of 135 years to serve. For the reasons explained in this opinion, we conclude that Article 1, Section 12 of the Alaska Constitution requires a sentencing court to consider a juvenile offender's youth and its attendant characteristics before sentencing a juvenile tried as an adult to the functional equivalent of life without parole. We further conclude that, assuming this new constitutional rule is retroactive, the defendant in this case, Winona M. Fletcher, is entitled to a resentencing in which her youth and its attendant characteristics are properly considered.
Accordingly, we reverse the superior court's dismissal of Fletcher's post-conviction relief application and we remand this case to the superior court so that the parties may further litigate the question of retroactivity.
Background facts and prior proceedings
In 1985, when Fletcher was fourteen years old, she and her nineteen-year-old boyfriend, Cordell Boyd, forced their way into an occupied residence at gunpoint in order to commit an armed robbery. While inside, they killed all three occupants of the home: sixty-nine-year-old Tom Faccio, seventy-year-old Ann Faccio, and Ann Faccio's sister, seventy-five-year-old Emilia Elliot. Fletcher shot Ann Faccio and Emilia Elliot, and Boyd shot Tom Faccio.[7]
The juvenile waiver hearing
Following Fletcher's arrest, the State filed a petition to waive juvenile jurisdiction over Fletcher. An extensive waiver hearing was then held in front of Superior Court Judge Karl S. Johnstone to determine whether Fletcher would be tried in juvenile or adult court. The critical question before the court was whether Fletcher would be amenable to treatment by the age of twenty.
Five mental health professionals who had evaluated Fletcher testified as to her amenability to treatment within the six-year period. Four out of the five experts expressed pessimism about Fletcher's amenability to treatment within the statutory period, although each expressed the possibility that progress could occur in someone so young. The fifth expert, Dr. Deborah Geeseman, testified that she believed "there is some probability that . . . with intensive and structured treatment [Fletcher] will be amenable to treatment [by the age of twenty]."
Fletcher's mother, Susan Schubert, testified regarding Fletcher's unstable and traumatic upbringing. According to Schubert, Fletcher had experienced sexual, physical, and emotional abuse from the key adults in her life - including Schubert, Schubert's boyfriend, and her maternal grandmother and step-grandfather. Fletcher was also subjected to a chaotic living environment marked by frequent moves, alcoholism, and illegal drug use.
Schubert testified that Boyd became sexually involved with Fletcher when Fletcher was thirteen years old.[9] Schubert was evicted from her residence shortly after Fletcher's fourteenth birthday, leaving Fletcher with no way to locate her. Around this same time, Fletcher began prostituting herself in downtown Anchorage.
Schubert testified that Fletcher told her that it was Boyd's idea to shoot the victims. A counselor from McLaughlin Youth Center, where Fletcher was detained, similarly testified that Fletcher told her that Boyd "was the one person that truly cared about her and loved her" and that she "did what he told her to do."
However, Boyd testified against Fletcher at the juvenile waiver hearing, painting a different picture. By that time, Boyd had reached a plea agreement with the State. The plea agreement reduced his charges to two counts of second-degree murder and one count of first-degree murder. As part of that plea agreement, Boyd was required to testify at Fletcher's waiver hearing, at any trial, and at sentencing.
At the juvenile waiver hearing, Boyd stated that Fletcher showed little reluctance to participate in the crimes. According to Boyd, it was Fletcher's idea to shoot the victims. Based on Boyd's testimony, the superior court found that Fletcher "was not forced, coerced, induced, or under influence by Boyd when she shot Ann Faccio and Emilia Elliott."
Ultimately, the court found that Fletcher would not be amenable to treatment before the age of twenty, and she could therefore be prosecuted as an adult. Soon afterward, a grand jury indicted Fletcher on three counts of first-degree murder.
The sentencing hearing
One month after this Court affirmed the superior court's juvenile waiver decision,[10] Fletcher, then fifteen years old, entered a no contest plea to two counts of first-degree murder and one count of second-degree murder. Fletcher faced a sentencing range of 20 to 99 years for each count of first-degree murder and a range of 5 to 99 years for the count of second-degree murder.[11]
The sentencing hearing was held before a different judge, Superior Court Judge Victor D. Carlson. At the hearing, the prosecutor argued that the court should impose the maximum sentence and that Fletcher "should never see the light of day" again. The prosecutor stated that she "[could not] explain how someone by the age of fourteen becomes as evil as Winona Fletcher was but that's just the way she is." The prosecutor also argued that the court should not give any weight to Fletcher's age and should treat her as an adult:
She has to be treated like an adult, she's been waived to adult court, she's got to be treated the same way as Mr. Boyd and she's got to be viewed as an adult committing this crime. The fact that she was fourteen at the time does not merit a lesser punishment. Our society in general does not view it as necessarily a mitigating factor that she is younger.
The prosecutor stated that "[t]here [were] no Court of Appeals decisions that [said] once a juvenile is waived that the court somehow . . . should treat them more leniently than an adult murderer in the same situation."
Fletcher's attorney noted that Judge Johnstone had only decided that Fletcher could not be rehabilitated in six years - not that she could never be rehabilitated. Fletcher's attorney asked the court to give Fletcher "a chance to show someone somewhere down the road that she has changed" by making her eligible for parole when she was forty or fifty years old.
The court's sentencing remarks were fairly cursory. The court acknowledged that, according to an updated evaluation from one of the experts, Fletcher had made some progress since the waiver hearing. But the court noted that the expert could offer no explanation for Fletcher's conduct. The judge then stated:
And that's what leaves me with the finding that your rehabilitation is very, very unlikely because I don't know what it is that you would be rehabilitated over or for or from or to what you would be rehabilitated. Because of your essential lack of a criminal record I had to look at that very carefully because rehabilitation is a very important factor in anyone who is young and especially in someone as young as you. But I essentially can't find evidence that you would become rehabilitated because I don't know what is wrong today.
In accordance with these remarks, the court prioritized the other Chaney factors - reaffirmation of societal norms, protection of the public, and deterrence of others - over...
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