Kitchen v. Whitmer
| Decision Date | 11 September 2020 |
| Docket Number | Case No. 18-11430 |
| Citation | 486 F.Supp.3d 1114 |
| Parties | Michael A. KITCHEN, Plaintiff, v. Gretchen WHITMER, Heidi Washington, and Michael Eagen, Defendants. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Michigan |
Michael Kitchen, Michigan Reformatory, Ionia, MI, for Plaintiff.
Allan J. Soros, Zachary Austin Zurek, Scott A. Mertens, Alicia M. Lane, Michigan Department of Attorney General, Lansing, MI, for Defendants.
In Graham v. Florida , the Supreme Court held that the Eighth Amendment requires states to provide juvenile nonhomicide offenders "some meaningful opportunity to obtain release based on demonstrated maturity and rehabilitation." And in Miller v. Alabama , the Supreme Court held that the Eighth Amendment requires a judge to account for the "mitigating qualities of youth" before sentencing a juvenile offender to life in prison without parole.
Michael Kitchen is a juvenile nonhomicide offender. And while he was not given a life sentence for his convictions, he was sentenced to more than four decades in prison without parole. And the state judge who sentenced Kitchen in 1987 did not explicitly account for the "mitigating qualities of youth." Further, setting aside credit for good behavior, Kitchen's first "opportunity to obtain release based on demonstrated maturity and rehabilitation" would not come until age 59.
Based on those facts and Graham and Miller , Kitchen has filed this lawsuit. But Kitchen does not directly challenge his sentence or ask for resentencing. Instead, he homes in on state laws that equate an offender's first opportunity for parole review with the completion of the offender's minimum prison term. As applied to Kitchen, these laws require Kitchen to serve 42 years in prison (less credits for good behavior) before the parole board may review him for release. Because these parole-eligibility laws do not distinguish between adult and juvenile offenders, i.e., because they do not factor in the "mitigating qualities of youth," Kitchen believes they violate the Eighth Amendment. He also believes that these laws violate the Equal Protection Clause and the Due Process Clause.
Two motions are pending for this Court's resolution. Kitchen seeks a preliminary injunction based on his claims under the Eighth Amendment, the analogous provision in the Michigan Constitution, and the Due Process Clause. Defendants—Michigan's governor, the director of Michigan's Department of Corrections, and the chairperson of Michigan's parole board—ask this Court to dismiss Kitchen's equal-protection and due-process claims. For the reasons set out below, Kitchen's motion will be denied and Defendants’ granted.
In March 1987, Kitchen was charged with, among other things, armed robbery, felony firearm, and criminal sexual conduct. (ECF No. 51, PageID.340.) Kitchen says he merely served as a "look out" while two others robbed a couple over a drug debt. (ECF No. 50, PageID.282.) He also states that during the robbery, the female victim was sexually "penetrated with a finger for two seconds." (Id. ) At the time of the robbery, Kitchen was only 17 years old.
Kitchen pled guilty to all charges except for criminal sexual conduct and felony firearm. (ECF No. 51, PageID.340.) On those charges, he went to trial. A Michigan jury found him guilty. (Id. )
By any measure, Kitchen was given a harsh sentence. For the criminal sexual conduct conviction, Oakland County Circuit Court Judge Richard D. Kuhn, Sr. sentenced Kitchen to a minimum of 40 years in prison. (ECF No. 55, PageID.398.) Except for the felony firearm convictions, Judge Kuhn ran Kitchen's other, shorter sentences concurrent to that 40-year sentence. (See id. ) But he made the two-year sentences for the felony firearm convictions consecutive to the 40-year sentence. (Id. ) In all then, Judge Kuhn sentenced Kitchen, a 17-year-old, to a minimum of 42 years in prison.
In 2010, after Kitchen had spent 23 years in prison, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Graham v. Florida , 560 U.S. 48, 130 S.Ct. 2011, 176 L.Ed.2d 825 (2010). There, the Court held that the Eighth Amendment prohibits juvenile offenders who do not commit homicide from being sentenced to life without parole. Id. at 75, 130 S.Ct. 2011. The Court reasoned that juveniles are different from adults in ways that matter to the Eighth Amendment: they have an "underdeveloped sense of responsibility," they "are more vulnerable ... to negative influences and outside pressures" than adults, and they are more amenable to rehabilitation than adults. Id. at 68, 130 S.Ct. 2011 (quoting Roper v. Simmons , 543 U.S. 551, 569, 125 S.Ct. 1183, 161 L.Ed.2d 1 (2005) ). And, said the Court, people who do not kill are "less deserving of the most serious forms of punishment." Id. at 69, 130 S.Ct. 2011. Thus, juvenile offenders who do not kill have "twice diminished moral culpability." Id. Further, the Court noted that it was "questionable" that a judge could accurately decide that a juvenile offender is incorrigible at the time of sentencing: "It is difficult even for expert psychologists to differentiate between the juvenile offender whose crime reflects unfortunate yet transient immaturity, and the rare juvenile offender whose crime reflects irreparable corruption." Id. at 73, 130 S.Ct. 2011 (quotation marks omitted). For these and other reasons, the Court held that the Eighth Amendment required states to give juvenile nonhomicide offenders "some meaningful opportunity to obtain release based on demonstrated maturity and rehabilitation." Id. at 75, 130 S.Ct. 2011.
Two years later, the Supreme Court decided Miller v. Alabama , 567 U.S. 460, 132 S.Ct. 2455, 183 L.Ed.2d 407 (2012). There, the Court held that the Eighth Amendment forbids sentencing schemes that required juvenile offenders to be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Id. at 479, 132 S.Ct. 2455. As in Graham , the Court stressed that youth "is a time of immaturity, irresponsibility, impetuousness, and recklessness." Id. at 476, 132 S.Ct. 2455 (). Although a judge could still sentence a juvenile homicide offender to life in prison without parole, the judge could do so only after "tak[ing] into account how children are different, and how those differences counsel against irrevocably sentencing them to a lifetime in prison." Id. at 480, 132 S.Ct. 2455.
A few years after Miller , the Supreme Court decided Montgomery v. Louisiana , ––– U.S. ––––, 136 S. Ct. 718, 193 L.Ed.2d 599 (2016). Not only did the Court hold that Miller applied to "juvenile offenders whose convictions and sentences were final when Miller was decided," id. at 725, but it also found that Miller had created a categorical rule, see id. at 729. Aside from "the rarest of juvenile offenders, those whose crimes reflect permanent incorrigibility," juvenile offenders as a class could not be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. See id. at 734.
In 2018, Kitchen, having spent the prior 31 years in prison, filed this lawsuit. His second amended complaint (which the Court will simply refer to as the "complaint") relies in substantial part on Miller and Graham . (See ECF No. 51.)
To appreciate Kitchen's claims and the relevance of Miller and Graham to them, some background on Michigan's indeterminate sentencing scheme is helpful. In Michigan, the judicial, legislative, and executive branches each play a role in deciding how long an offender will spend in prison. The judge sets the minimum term that the offender will spend in prison; for Kitchen, that is 42 years. The legislature, through its statutes, sets the maximum prison term; for Kitchen, that is 60 years. The precise amount of time that an offender will spend in prison—42 years, 60 years, or something in between—is the call of the executive branch, and more specifically, the parole board.
Two statutes that help implement this scheme are relevant here: a prisoner is "subject to the jurisdiction of the parole board when the prisoner has served a period of time equal to the minimum sentence imposed by the court for the crime of which he or she was convicted, less good time and disciplinary credits, if applicable." Mich. Comp. Laws § 791.234(1) ; see also Mich. Comp. Laws § 791.233b (). Thus, under § 791.234(1), § 791.233b, and the implementing regulations and rules (collectively, the "parole-eligibility laws"), Kitchen will not come within the jurisdiction of the parole board until he has served 42 years in prison less disciplinary credits (which are currently projected to put him before the parole board after 39.5 years).
With that background on Michigan's sentencing scheme, Kitchen's claims are more readily understood. Because the parole-eligibility laws require all offenders—adults and juveniles alike—to serve their entire minimum sentence before being reviewed for parole, Kitchen believes that the laws are unconstitutional. In Kitchen's view, because the parole-eligibility laws do not account for the "mitigating qualities of youth," Miller , 567 U.S. at 476, 132 S.Ct. 2455, they violate the Eighth Amendment and the analogous provision in the Michigan Constitution, (ECF No. 51, PageID.340–341, 349–350). Kitchen also believes the parole-eligibility laws violate the Equal Protection Clause and the substantive component of the Due Process Clause. (ECF No. 51, PageID.344–348.)
This opinion addresses two motions pending before the Court. (ECF No. 50, 55.) Kitchen seeks a preliminary injunction based on his claims under the Eighth Amendment, Michigan's analog, and the Due Process Clause. (See ECF No. 50.) (He has not sought preliminary relief based on his Equal Protection Clause claim.) Defendants—Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Director of the ...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
State v. Conner
...in the instant case are remarkably similar to those which existed for the defendant in the Michigan case of Kitchen v. Whitmer , 486 F. Supp. 3d 1114 (2020). The defendant Kitchen, who committed a series of criminal offenses at the age of seventeen years, was sentenced to a minimum of forty......
- Scalia v. KDE Equine, LLC
-
State v. Arnold
...eighth amendment to the United States constitution expressly addresses the defendant's due process concerns; see Kitchen v. Whitmer, 486 F. Supp. 3d 1114, 1132-33 (E.D. Mich. 2020); and (2) both the United States Supreme Court and our Supreme Court have held that the parole remedy is consti......
-
State v. Conner
...in the instant case are remarkably similar to those which existed for the defendant in the Michigan case of Kitchen v. Whitman, 486 F.Supp.3d 1114 (2020). The defendant Kitchen, who committed a series of criminal offenses at the age of seventeen years, was sentenced to a minimum of forty-tw......