Malvo v. State
| Decision Date | 26 August 2022 |
| Docket Number | 29-2021 |
| Parties | Lee Boyd Malvo v. State of Maryland |
| Court | Maryland Court of Appeals |
Argued: February 8, 2022
Getty, C.J. [*] , McDonald *, Watts, Hotten, Booth, Biran, Gould, JJ.
OPINION
McDonald, J.
To be legal, a sentence in a criminal case must be consistent both with the law governing the offense for which the defendant was convicted and with the Eighth Amendment's proscription against "cruel and unusual" punishments. During the past two decades, the United States Supreme Court has issued several decisions elaborating on the application of the Eighth Amendment to juvenile offenders sentenced as adults. This case concerns whether a juvenile offender who was sentenced prior to key decisions pertinent to his situation should be resentenced to ensure that his sentence complies with the Constitution and therefore is legal.
Over the course of three weeks in October 2002, Petitioner Lee Boyd Malvo, then age 17, and John Allen Muhammad, then age 41, committed a series of murders in the greater Washington, D.C. area, primarily by shooting a high-powered rifle while concealed in the trunk of a modified automobile so as to terrorize the area of the country in which Mr. Muhammad's ex-wife lived. These crimes received considerable national media attention and became known as the "DC sniper attacks."
Mr. Malvo and Mr. Muhammad were charged with multiple counts of murder and other crimes in Virginia and Maryland. In Virginia, Mr. Malvo was convicted on four counts of first-degree murder. In Maryland, Mr. Malvo voluntarily testified against Mr. Muhammad and, in 2006, pled guilty to six counts of first-degree murder in the Circuit Court for Montgomery County. At his sentencing that year, the prosecutor stated that Mr. Malvo, once under the sway of an "evil man," had changed and "grown tremendously" since his participation in the crimes. The sentencing court similarly acknowledged Mr. Malvo's cooperation with law enforcement, his remorse, and his transformation since he was arrested. The court sentenced Mr. Malvo to the maximum sentence of six terms of life in prison without the possibility of parole, to run consecutively to each other and to the four sentences of life without parole that he was serving in Virginia.
Mr. Malvo's sentence was consistent with the pertinent State statute and with the advisory State sentencing guidelines at that time. Since then, however, the Supreme Court has held that the Eighth Amendment does not permit a sentence of life without parole for a juvenile homicide offender if a sentencing court determines that the offender's crime was the result of transient immaturity, as opposed to permanent incorrigibility.[1] The Supreme Court has further held that this constraint applies retroactively and, thus, it applies to Mr. Malvo's case.
In 2017, Mr. Malvo filed a motion to correct an illegal sentence, based in part on the ground that the sentencing court did not have the benefit of the subsequent, but retroactive, Supreme Court decisions at the time he was sentenced. The Circuit Court for Montgomery County denied the motion.
This case presents the question whether ambiguity in a sentencing court's remarks about a juvenile offender's post-offense conduct and character, when made before the Supreme Court issued the decisions that govern the sentencing of a juvenile offender to life without the possibility of parole, rendered such a sentence illegal under the Eighth Amendment. Based on the record of this case, opposing inferences can be drawn as to whether the sentencing judge determined that Mr. Malvo was not "the rare juvenile offender whose crime reflects irreparable corruption" for whom the Eighth Amendment allows a sentence of life without parole. If the sentencing judge reached that conclusion, the sentence failed to comport with the Constitution. In light of this ambiguity, Mr. Malvo must be resentenced.
As a practical matter, this may be an academic question in Mr. Malvo's case, as he would first have to be granted parole in Virginia before his consecutive life sentences in Maryland even begin. Ultimately, it is not for this Court to decide the appropriate sentence for Mr. Malvo or whether he should ever be released from his Maryland sentences. We hold only that the Eighth Amendment requires that he receive a new sentencing hearing at which the sentencing court, now cognizant of the principles elucidated by the Supreme Court, is able to consider whether or not he is constitutionally eligible for life without parole under those decisions.
The Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution forbids the imposition of "cruel and unusual" punishments. The Supreme Court has explained that giving effect to the provision's guarantee requires "referring to the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society to determine which punishments are so disproportionate as to be cruel and unusual." Roper v. Simmons, 543 U.S. 551, 561 (2005) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). Graham v. Florida, 560 U.S. 48, 58 (2010) (citation and internal quotation marks omitted).
In recent years, the Supreme Court has issued a series of decisions applying this Eighth Amendment standard in the context of juvenile offenders sentenced to severe punishments in the criminal justice system. As recounted in Part I.B.4 of this opinion, Mr. Malvo's sentencing occurred in late 2006 near the beginning of this series of decisions and preceded a number of decisions significant to the resolution of this case.
In 2005, Roper was the first in the Supreme Court's series of decisions concerning the application of the Eighth Amendment to the sentencing of juvenile offenders. There, the Court held that the Eighth Amendment forbids the execution of an offender who committed the crime when younger than 18 years old. 543 U.S. at 568. The Court noted that a majority of states had already banned the punishment and emphasized that "three general differences between juveniles under 18 and adults demonstrate that juvenile offenders cannot with reliability be classified among the worst offenders." Id. at 569. Specifically, those differences are (1) juveniles' lack of maturity and an underdeveloped sense of responsibility resulting in "impetuous and ill-considered actions and decisions"; (2) juveniles' greater vulnerability or susceptibility to negative influences and outside pressures; and (3) the more mutable nature of juveniles' character and personality traits. Id. at 569-70. In light of these differences, the Court determined that the two distinct social purposes served by the death penalty - retribution and deterrence - apply to juveniles with lesser force than to adults. Id. at 570. In rejecting the argument that juveniles' reduced culpability can be adequately considered on a case-by-case basis, the Court identified an "unacceptable likelihood … that the brutality or cold-blooded nature of any particular crime would overpower mitigating arguments based on youth … even where the juvenile offender's objective immaturity, vulnerability, and lack of true depravity should require a sentence less severe than death." Id. at 572-73.
Roper dealt exclusively with the death penalty. Five years later in 2010 - four years after Mr. Malvo's sentencing - the Supreme Court first declared that the Eighth Amendment also imposes constraints on the imposition of a life without parole sentence on a juvenile offender. In Graham v. Florida, 560 U.S. 48, 59, 74 (2010), the Court held that the Constitution forbids sentencing a juvenile non-homicide offender to life without parole, announcing for the first time a categorical restriction under the Eighth Amendment on a punishment other than the death penalty. The Court noted that "life without parole sentences share some characteristics with death sentences" in that they "alter[] the offender's life by a forfeiture that is irrevocable." Id. at 69. Such sentences are particularly harsh when imposed on a juvenile offender, who will "on average serve more years and a greater percentage of his life in prison than an adult offender." Id. at 70.
In addition to identifying a national and international consensus against sentencing juvenile non-homicide offenders to die in prison, the Graham Court returned to the discussion of juvenile culpability that it began in Roper. 560 U.S. at 62, 80. In a review of the four legitimate penological objectives - retribution, deterrence, incapacitation, and rehabilitation - the Court found that none justified a life without parole sentence for a juvenile not convicted of murder. Id. at 71. Such offenders must instead have a "meaningful opportunity to obtain release based on demonstrated maturity and rehabilitation." Id. at 75.
Two years later, in the first of a trilogy of decisions that are particularly relevant to this case, the Court held that "the Eighth Amendment forbids a sentencing scheme that mandates life in prison without possibility of parole for juvenile offenders." Miller v. Alabama, 567 U.S. 460, 479 (2012). The Court reiterated the three general differences between juveniles and adults first articulated in Roper - immaturity, susceptibility...
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