Jedlicka v. State

• Docket Number: 30, Sept. Term, 2021
• Decision Date: 26 August 2022
• Citation: 481 Md. 178,281 A.3d 820
• Parties: Seth D. JEDLICKA v. STATE of Maryland
• Court: Court of Special Appeals of Maryland

481 Md. 178

281 A.3d 820

Seth D. JEDLICKA

v.STATE of Maryland

No. 30, Sept. Term, 2021

Court of Appeals of Maryland.

August 26, 2022

Argued by Robert W. Biddle (Rachel L. Wilson, Nathans & Biddle, LLP, Baltimore, MD), on brief, for Petitioner.

Argued by Jer Welter, Asst. Atty. Gen. (Brian E. Frosh, Atty. Gen. of Maryland, Baltimore, MD), on brief, for Respondent.

Argued before:^* Getty, C.J., *McDonald, Watts, Hotten, Booth, Biran, Gould, JJ.

McDonald, J.

Over the last two decades, there have been significant developments in the law governing the sentencing, and the potential release from confinement, of juvenile offenders who commit serious crimes. Changes have come at the state and federal levels, through both the courts and the legislative process. The Supreme Court has held that the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution categorically forbids sentencing a juvenile non-homicide offender to life without the possibility of parole and requires an individualized sentencing process before such a sentence may be imposed on a juvenile homicide offender.¹ This Court has determined that certain lengthy sentences expressed as a term of years with a lengthy period of ineligibility for parole may be de facto sentences of life without parole and therefore may also violate the Eighth Amendment when imposed on juvenile non-homicide offenders.² The General Assembly has both reformed the parole process and, for juvenile offenders sentenced as adults, provided another avenue for release of those who can demonstrate maturity and rehabilitation following a substantial period of incarceration.³

In 2010, Petitioner Seth Jedlicka was convicted of first-degree felony murder and other crimes for his involvement, at age 16, in a burglary that resulted in the murder of one of the victims. In 2011, he was sentenced to life in prison with all but 60 years suspended for the murder conviction and a concurrent aggregate 60-year sentence for the other offenses. He will be eligible for parole after serving 25 years of his sentence, at which time he will be 42 years old. Mr. Jedlicka filed a motion to correct an illegal sentence arguing that his sentencing proceeding failed to comply with the constitutional protections recognized in recent decisions of the Supreme Court and this Court.

The Circuit Court and the Court of Special Appeals both rejected Mr. Jedlicka's argument. We agree. Mr. Jedlicka's sentence is not a de facto sentence of life without parole. He will have multiple meaningful opportunities for release based on demonstrated maturity and rehabilitation with a hope of spending some significant portion of his life outside of prison. And, in any event, his sentencing proceeding did not violate the Eighth Amendment's application to certain juvenile offenders, as construed by recent Supreme Court decisions.

IBackground

A. Developments in the Sentencing of Juvenile Offenders

1. Recent Case Law on Life Sentences and Juvenile Offenders

Prohibiting life without parole sentences for juvenile non-homicide offenders

In 2010, in the first of a series of four decisions on life sentences and juvenile offenders, the Supreme Court held that, for a juvenile non-homicide offender, the Eighth Amendment forbids imposition of a sentence of life without parole. Graham v. Florida , 560 U.S. 48, 130 S.Ct. 2011, 176 L.Ed.2d 825 (2010).⁴ Such offenders must have "some meaningful opportunity to obtain release based on demonstrated maturity and rehabilitation." Id. at 75, 130 S.Ct. 2011. The Court held that the Eighth Amendment's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment embodies the "precept of justice that punishment for crime should be graduated and proportioned to the offense." Id. at 59, 130 S.Ct. 2011, quoting Weems v. United States , 217 U.S. 349, 367, 30 S.Ct. 544, 54 L.Ed. 793 (1910). The Court acknowledged that "when compared to an adult murderer, a juvenile offender who did not kill or intend to kill has a twice diminished moral culpability. The age of the offender and the nature of the crime each bear on the analysis." Id. at 69, 130 S.Ct. 2011. The Court also determined that none of the four legitimate penological objectives – retribution, deterrence, incapacitation, and rehabilitation – justified such a sentence. Id. at 71, 130 S.Ct. 2011. Thus, in the specific case of juvenile non-homicide offenders, the punishment of life without parole is categorically disproportionate.

Dealing with de facto sentences of life without parole

Applying the holding in Graham , this Court later held that a lengthy term-of-years sentence with a remote possibility of parole can, in certain circumstances, be a de facto sentence of life without parole that is also prohibited by the Eighth Amendment for juvenile offenders.

Carter v. State , 461 Md. 295, 350, 192 A.3d 695 (2018). This conclusion was a matter of common sense; otherwise, a sentencing court could easily circumvent the constraints of the Eighth Amendment by stating a sentence in numerical terms that exceed any reasonable possibility of parole during the defendant's life. Id. at 347-49, 192 A.3d 695. The Court also concluded that no penological theory justified treating a sentence that effectively condemned a juvenile non-homicide offender to die in prison any differently than an explicit sentence of life without parole. Id. at 350, 192 A.3d 695.

The Court's holding in Carter necessarily raised the question of when a term of years is a de facto life-without-parole sentence that offends the Eighth Amendment. The Court declined to identify a specific period of parole ineligibility that equates to a de facto life sentence without parole. A complicating aspect of some term-of-years sentences is that they aggregate penalties imposed for multiple criminal episodes. When determining whether a given sentence is cruel or unusual, a reviewing court cannot ignore the context in which the sentence was imposed. Thus, the Court outlined a two-step analysis in which a reviewing court determines (1) whether the terms of the sentence potentially equate to life without parole, and (2) when the sentence is an aggregate one based on multiple convictions, whether the crimes underlying those convictions are closely related in time and circumstance.

The first part of the analysis, which applies to any term-of-years sentence, assesses the period of parole ineligibility in light of certain "benchmarks." The benchmarks identified in Carter included: (1) the offender's natural life expectancy; (2) the parole eligibility of an offender serving a life sentence; (3) a 50-year threshold; (4) legislative reforms in the wake of Graham ; and (5) the typical retirement age. 461 Md. at 351-56, 192 A.3d 695. The Court did not explicitly adopt any single benchmark, preferring instead to allow reviewing courts flexibility in conducting the analysis.

When a lengthy term-of-years sentence results from a single conviction, the reviewing court need not look beyond the benchmarks to assess whether the sentence is in fact one of life without parole. However, the second step is required when a particular sentence that appears under the benchmarks to equate to a de facto sentence of life is actually the aggregate of multiple sentences for different convictions. This second step applies only to "stacked" sentences that represent the aggregation of multiple terms of incarceration. 461 Md. at 356-61, 192 A.3d 695. Here, the Carter Court borrowed two related principles from prior cases regarding proportionality – that whether a sentence is excessive under the Eighth Amendment "can never be litigated in the abstract but must be assessed on a case-by-case basis" and that "proportionality [is measured] not by comparing the sentence with the label of the crime ... but by comparing the sentence with the behavior of the criminal and the consequences of his act." Id. at 356, 192 A.3d 695, quoting Thomas v. State , 333 Md. 84, 97, 634 A.2d 1 (1993). To guide courts in conducting a similar case-by-case review in the specific context of identifying a de facto life-without-parole sentence, the Court sketched out a spectrum of juvenile offender culpability:

... At one end of the spectrum, an individual may embark on a serious crime spree, involving, for example, a series of armed robberies or sexual assaults over weeks or months or even years. Whether the crimes are prosecuted together or separately, the courts may sentence the individual to significant periods of incarceration for each incident. These circumstances are least likely to warrant the aggregate sentence being treated as a de facto life sentence. The number of crimes, their seriousness, and the opportunity for the juvenile to reflect before each bad decision also makes it less likely that the aggregate sentence is constitutionally disproportionate even after taking youth and attendant characteristics into account.

At the other end of the spectrum is a situation where an individual is involved in one event or makes one bad decision that, for various reasons, may involve several separate crimes that do not merge into one another for sentencing purposes and for which consecutive sentences may be imposed. Here, the argument to treat a lengthy stacked sentence as if it were a de facto life sentence is strongest. There is little, if any, opportunity to reflect upon or abandon the underlying conduct between individual offenses. The initial decision should usually be treated the same as one to commit a single criminal offense carrying a sentence of life without parole.

Id. at 356-57, 192 A.3d 695.⁵

Individualized sentencing process

In Miller v. Alabama , 567 U.S. 460, 479, 132 S.Ct. 2455, 183 L.Ed.2d 407 (2012), the Supreme Court held that "the Eighth Amendment forbids a sentencing scheme that mandates life in prison without possibility of parole for juvenile offenders." The Court reasoned that "[b]y making youth (and all that accompanies it) irrelevant to imposition of that harshest prison sentence, such...