State v. Ryan

• Citation: 268 A.3d 311,249 N.J. 581
• Decision Date: 07 February 2022
• Docket Number: 085165,A-65 September Term 2020
• Parties: STATE of New Jersey, Plaintiff-Respondent, v. Samuel RYAN, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: United States State Supreme Court (New Jersey)

249 N.J. 581

268 A.3d 311

STATE of New Jersey, Plaintiff-Respondent,

v.Samuel RYAN, Defendant-Appellant.

A-65 September Term 2020

085165

Supreme Court of New Jersey.

Argued November 29, 2021

Decided February 7, 2022

James K. Smith, Jr., Assistant Deputy Public Defender, argued the cause for appellant (Joseph E. Krakora, Public Defender, attorney; James K. Smith, Jr., of counsel and on the briefs).

Daniel A. Finkelstein, Deputy Attorney General, argued the cause for respondent (Andrew J. Bruck, Acting Attorney General, attorney; Daniel A. Finkelstein, of counsel and on the briefs).

Elana Wilf argued the cause for amici curiae the Rutgers Criminal and Youth Justice Clinic and American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey (Rutgers University School of Law – Newark Criminal and Youth Justice Clinic and American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey Foundation, attorneys; Elana Wilf, Laura Cohen, Alexander Shalom, Newark, and Jeanne LoCicero, of the brief).

Dillon J. McGuire argued the cause for amicus curiae Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers of New Jersey (Pashman Stein Walder Hayden, attorneys; Dillon J. McGuire, Hackensack, of counsel and on the brief, and CJ Griffin, on the brief).

JUSTICE SOLOMON delivered the opinion of the Court.

In the winter of 1996, at the age of twenty-three, defendant Samuel Ryan robbed a Bridgeton, New Jersey gas station at gunpoint, stealing $100 and shooting a store clerk in the process. The offense resulted in defendant's third first-degree robbery conviction, and he was sentenced to life in prison without parole pursuant to the Persistent Offender Accountability Act, N.J.S.A. 2C:43-7.1(a), known as the "Three Strikes Law."

A "legislative reaction to ... shocking murders by paroled offenders," the Three Strikes Law mandates a sentence of life imprisonment without parole for a third-time offender who had been convicted of certain serious and violent offenses on two prior occasions. State v. Oliver, 162 N.J. 580, 583, 745 A.2d 1165 (2000). Defendant's three strikes included two first-degree armed robberies committed as a sixteen-year-old juvenile; he was waived to Superior Court¹ and prosecuted jointly for both crimes -- the first strike. After his release from prison, at the age of twenty-three, defendant committed two first-degree armed robberies -- the second and third strikes.²

In this appeal, defendant contends that the Three Strikes Law violates the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment contained in the Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution and Article I, Paragraph 12 of the New Jersey Constitution. He alleges that, by allowing courts to count crimes committed while under the age of eighteen as predicate offenses in sentencing defendants to mandatory life without parole, the Three Strikes Law ignores the constitutional constraints embodied in Miller v. Alabama, 567 U.S. 460, 132 S.Ct. 2455, 183 L.Ed.2d 407 (2012), and State v. Zuber, 227 N.J. 422, 152 A.3d 197 (2017), which prohibit imposition of mandatory life-without-parole sentences or their functional equivalent on juvenile offenders.

Because defendant committed his third offense and received an enhanced sentence of life without parole as an adult, we hold that this appeal does not implicate Miller or Zuber. Accordingly, we affirm defendant's sentence and reaffirm the constitutionality of the Three Strikes Law.

I.

A.

We derive the following facts from the record of the court that sentenced defendant for his third strike.

At the age of sixteen, defendant committed two armed robberies within two days in November 1989. First, defendant and an accomplice robbed a gas station with a nine-millimeter semi-automatic pistol. Two days later, defendant and his accomplice committed another robbery at an apartment complex in Bridgeton, New Jersey with a .22-caliber rifle. Defendant was waived to Superior Court and prosecuted as an adult for both crimes concurrently; defendant pled guilty to two counts of first-degree robbery, N.J.S.A. 2C:15-1(a). The court found that defendant committed a first-degree Graves Act³ offense and sentenced him to ten years’ imprisonment with three and a third years of parole ineligibility.

Defendant was released on parole in May 1993. In February 1996, at the age of twenty-three, less than three years after his release from prison, defendant committed two more armed robberies. First, he and a co-defendant stole cigarettes, food stamps, and $243 from a Wawa in Vineland, assaulting two employees in the process. Three weeks later, defendant, acting alone, committed another armed robbery at a Bridgeton gas station, where he stole $100 and shot a store clerk in the neck, fracturing his jaw. Defendant was indicted separately for each robbery.

Following trial on the Wawa robbery, a jury convicted defendant of first-degree robbery, N.J.S.A. 2C:15-1(a), among other charges. The trial court sentenced defendant to a sixty-year extended term under the Graves Act with twenty years of parole ineligibility.

Five months later, a jury convicted defendant of the gas station robbery. The State moved to sentence defendant to an extended term pursuant to the Three Strikes Law, predicated upon his 1990 conviction of two counts of first-degree robbery, his 1997 conviction of first-degree robbery, and the current conviction. Finding that defendant had committed three first-degree armed robberies and first-degree attempted murder, the sentencing judge granted the State's application for an extended term sentence and imposed concurrent mandatory life sentences without parole for the armed robbery and attempted murder convictions.

Defendant appealed his convictions and sentence. Defendant's arguments included that the mandatory sentence of life without parole imposed under the Three Strikes Law constituted cruel and unusual punishment. The Appellate Division affirmed defendant's convictions and life sentences without parole, noting that it had already found the Three Strikes Law to be constitutional.⁴ We denied defendant's petition for certification.

Defendant thereafter filed eleven post-conviction relief (PCR) petitions between 1999 and 2012. None were successful, and defendant remained incarcerated.

B.

In 2018, defendant filed his twelfth PCR petition -- a motion to correct an illegal sentence -- relying on the United States Supreme Court's holding in Miller v. Alabama, 567 U.S. 460, 132 S.Ct. 2455, that mandatory life-without-parole sentences for juvenile offenders are unconstitutional, and this Court's holding in State v. Zuber, 227 N.J. 422, 152 A.3d 197, that juveniles cannot be sentenced to the functional equivalent of life without parole. Defendant contended that his sentence was unconstitutional because his first strike occurred when he was a juvenile and the sentencing court did not consider the Miller factors⁵ before imposing a mandatory life sentence under the Three Strikes Law.

The trial court denied defendant's motion, finding that because defendant received his enhanced life sentence as an adult, Miller and Zuber did not apply. The court explained that defendant's conviction while a juvenile counted as a conviction in adult court for a first-degree Graves Act offense -- a first strike. Miller and Zuber, the court further reasoned, are intended to offer incarcerated juveniles a meaningful opportunity to re-enter society upon rehabilitation, but defendant already had that opportunity and chose to return to his violent behaviors as an adult. The court therefore held that defendant properly received an enhanced sentence under the Three Strikes Law.

The Appellate Division affirmed, adopting the trial court's reasoning that defendant received his mandatory life sentence as an adult and that Miller and Zuber were therefore inapposite. The court further noted that defendant had his opportunity to re-enter society when he was released from prison in 1993, but instead continued to commit even more violent crimes.

This Court granted defendant's petition for certification to consider whether a defendant's prior juvenile-age conviction counts as a predicate offense under the Three Strikes Law. 246 N.J. 316 (2021). We then granted leave to participate as amici curiae to the Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers of New Jersey (ACDL) and to the Rutgers Criminal and Youth Justice Clinic and the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey, participating jointly (collectively, Rutgers Clinic).

II.

Defendant contends that allowing sentencing courts to count juvenile offenses as strikes when imposing on defendants mandatory life-without-parole sentences violates both the Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution, and Article I, Paragraph 12 of the New Jersey Constitution. He argues that juvenile-age convictions are not the same as convictions for offenses committed as an adult and therefore cannot be considered under the Three Strikes Law because juveniles are less culpable and less deserving of such severe punishment than adults. Defendant notes that, in sentencing him to life without parole, the court did not apply the Miller factors to his first strike or consider how young he was at the time of the offense. He argues that the Three Strikes Law's mandatory minimum sentence of life without parole precludes judges from considering youth as a mitigating factor at sentencing and denies the offender a meaningful opportunity to obtain release based upon demonstrated maturity and rehabilitation.

Defendant also highlights that the Three Strikes Law contains no language limiting its application to juvenile offenders and contends that sentencing courts could conceivably impose mandatory life-without-parole sentences even when all three offenses were committed while a juvenile. Finally, defendant argues that because the "persistent offender" statute, N.J.S.A. 2C:44-3(a), defines recidivists as defendants over the age of twenty-one who committed three first-, second-, or third-degree qualifying crimes after turning...