State v. Tate

• Citation: 130 So.3d 829
• Decision Date: 27 January 2014
• Docket Number: No. 2012–OK–2763.,2012–OK–2763.
• Parties: STATE of Louisiana v. Darryl TATE.
• Court: Supreme Court of Louisiana

130 So.3d 829

STATE of Louisiana
v.
Darryl TATE.

No. 2012–OK–2763.

Supreme Court of Louisiana.

Nov. 5, 2013.
Rehearing Denied Jan. 27, 2014.

[130 So.3d 831]

Department of Justice, State of Louisiana, James D. Caldwell, Attorney General, Colin Andrew Clark, Assistant Attorney General, District Attorney's Office, Orleans Parish, Leon A. Cannizarro, Jr., District Attorney, Donna R. Andrieu, Chief of Appeal, Scott Gerard Vincent, Assistant District Attorney, for Applicant.

Darryl Tate (Pro Se), Tulane Law Clinic, Katherine Maris Mattes, Bryan A. Stevenson, Pro Hac Vice, for Respondent.

KNOLL, Justice.

This criminal post-conviction proceeding presents the res nova issue of whether Miller v. Alabama, 567 U.S. ––––, 132 S.Ct. 2455, 183 L.Ed.2d 407 (2012), in which the United States Supreme Court held mandatory life imprisonment without parole for juvenile homicide offenders violates the Eighth Amendment prohibition of cruel and unusual punishments, applies retroactively in state collateral proceedings. The defendant, Darryl Tate, whose mandatory life-without-parole sentence for a second-degree murder he committed as a juvenile became final in 1984, filed a motion seeking resentencing in light of Miller. The District Court denied his motion, but the Court of Appeal granted writs, remanding the matter for a sentencing hearing. We granted writs to address the retroactivity of Miller to those juvenile homicide convictions final at the time Miller was rendered. State v. Darryl Tate, 12–2763 (La.4/19/13), 111 So.3d 1023. For the following reasons, we find Miller does not apply retroactively in cases on collateral review as it merely sets forth a new rule of criminal constitutional procedure, which is neither substantive nor implicative of the fundamental fairness and accuracy of criminal proceedings. Therefore, we reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeal and reinstate the judgment of the District Court.

FACTS

Around 2:20 a.m. on April 1, 1981, Tate robbed Keith Dillan and Anthony Jeffrey at gunpoint as the victims sat inside Jeffrey's car in a parking lot near South Rampart and Calliope Streets in New Orleans, Louisiana. Dillan testified he saw

[130 So.3d 832]

Tate illuminated by streetlights as he approached the car and looked directly at him for a few seconds when he leaned over the driver's seat to give the gunman his money. After Dillan gave him 40¢, Tate demanded money from Jeffrey and then shot him in the chest when Jeffrey tried to start the car in an apparent attempt to flee. Dillan escaped and called police, but Jeffrey was pronounced dead at the scene.

Tate was subsequently linked to this homicide after he was arrested and charged with a separate armed robbery and attempted murder of a tourist outside the French Quarter, and tests determined his weapon was the one used to shoot Jeffrey. Dillan then identified Tate as the person who robbed him and killed Jeffrey.

On November 9, 1982, Tate pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder, and armed robbery, while reserving the right to appeal the denial of his motion to suppress the identification pursuant to State v. Crosby, 338 So.2d 584 (La.1976). The criminal district court sentenced him to concurrent terms of life imprisonment at hard labor without benefit of parole, probation, or suspension of sentence, 50 years imprisonment at hard labor, and 50 years imprisonment at hard labor without benefit of parole, probation, or suspension of sentence. The Court of Appeal affirmed. State v. Tate, 454 So.2d 391 (La.App. 4th Cir.1984). According to the arrest register and the grand jury indictment, Tate was born on November 6, 1963, and, therefore, was seventeen years and five months of age at the time he committed the offenses.

In 2012, Tate pro se filed what he captioned as a motion to correct an illegal sentence, requesting resentencing in light of the recently decided Miller. On October 29, 2012, the District Court denied his motion, holding:

The defendant was convicted and sentenced within the approved sentencing guidelines. As such, the defendant's motion to correct an illegal sentence is denied.

The defendant asserts that at the time of the commission of the crime he was a minor under the age of eighteen (18). While this is true, the defendant was under the age of eighteen, he was seventeen (17) years old when he committed the offenses. Under Louisiana law with regard to criminal prosecution he is considered an adult and was sentenced accordingly.

The Court of Appeal, Fourth Circuit, however, granted writs, reasoning:

In Miller v. Alabama, 567 U.S. ––––, 132 S.Ct. 2455, 183 L.Ed.2d 407 (2012), the Court held that mandatory life imprisonment without parole for those offenders under the age of eighteen years at the time they committed a homicide offense violates the Eighth Amendment prohibition of “cruel and unusual punishments.” Id., 567 U.S. at ––––, 132 S.Ct. at 2466. As the Louisiana Supreme Court found in two per curiam opinions, the Court did not prohibit life imprisonment without parole for juveniles, but instead required that a sentencing court consider an offender's youth and attendant characteristics as mitigating circumstances before deciding to impose the harshest possible penalty for juveniles who have committed a homicide offense. State v. Simmons, 2011–1810 (La.10/12/12), 99 So.3d 28;State v. Graham, 2011–2260 (La.10/12/12), 99 So.3d 28. Therefore, the district court's judgment denying relator's motion to correct an illegal sentence on October 29, 2012 is hereby vacated. The matter is remanded for reconsideration after conducting a sentencing hearing in accord with the principles enunciated in Miller and stating the reasons for reconsideration and sentencing on the record within

[130 So.3d 833]

sixty days of this order. See Simmons;Graham. As proof of compliance, the district court is ordered to provide this Court with a copy of its reasons following the hearing.

State v. Tate, 12–1671 (La.App. 4 Cir. 12/19/12) (unpub'd).

To resolve the dispute between the lower courts regarding the retroactivity of Miller on collateral review,¹ we begin with an in-depth examination of its holding.

DISCUSSION

In Miller, the Supreme Court specifically held “the Eighth Amendment forbids a sentencing scheme that mandates life in prison without possibility of parole for juvenile offenders,” finding instead the sentencing court must first hold a hearing to consider mitigating factors, such as the defendant's youth, before imposing this severe penalty. Miller, 132 S.Ct. at 2469. In so doing, the Supreme Court resolved the issue left unanswered by the Graham v. Florida categorical ban on life imprisonment without parole sentences for non-homicide juvenile offenders and the Roper v. Simmons, 543 U.S. 551, 125 S.Ct. 1183, 161 L.Ed.2d 1 (2005) categorical ban on capital punishment for juvenile offenders.

Keeping with its reasoning in Graham and Roper, the Supreme Court explained

[130 So.3d 834]

“[b]y making youth (and all that accompanies it) irrelevant to imposition of that harshest prison sentence, such a scheme poses too great a risk of disproportionate punishment.” Miller, 132 S.Ct. at 2469. However, it rejected arguments for a categorical bar similar to Graham and Roper, stating “[a]lthough we do not foreclose a sentencer's ability to make that judgment in homicide cases, we require it to take into account how children are different, and how those differences counsel against irrevocably sentencing them to a lifetime in prison.” Id. In clarifying its holding, the Supreme Court emphasized:

.... Our decision does not categorically bar a penalty for a class of offenders or type of crime—as, for example, we did in Roper or Graham. Instead, it mandates only that a sentencer follow a certain process—considering an offender's youth and attendant characteristics—before imposing a particular penalty. And in so requiring, our decision flows straightforwardly from our precedents: specifically, the principles of Roper, Graham, and our individualized sentencing cases that youth matters for purposes of meting out the law's most serious punishments.

Id. at 2471.

Our task in the present case is determining whether Tate and other offenders, whose convictions for homicides committed while juveniles were final when Miller was rendered, are now entitled to the benefit of the rule announced in Miller. Dispositive herein, therefore, is whether Miller is subject to retroactive application in state collateral proceedings.

As we stated in State ex rel. Taylor v. Whitley, 606 So.2d 1292, 1297 (La.1992), cert. denied,508 U.S. 962, 113 S.Ct. 2935, 124 L.Ed.2d 684 (1993), the standards for determining retroactivity set forth in Teague v. Lane, 489 U.S. 288, 109 S.Ct. 1060, 103 L.Ed.2d 334 (1989), apply to “all cases on collateral review in our state courts.” Accordingly, our analysis is directed by the Teague inquiry.

We conduct this inquiry in three steps:

First, the date on which the defendant's conviction became final is determined. Lambrix v. Singletary, 520 U.S. 518, 527, 117 S.Ct. 1517, 1524, 137 L.Ed.2d 771 (1997). Next, the habeas court considers whether “ ‘a state court considering [the defendant's] claim at the time his conviction became final would have felt compelled by existing precedent to conclude that the rule [he] seeks was required by the Constitution.’ ” Ibid. (quoting Saffle v. Parks, 494 U.S. 484, 488, 110 S.Ct. 1257, 1260, 108 L.Ed.2d 415 (1990))(alterations in Lambrix ). If not, then the rule is new. If the rule is determined to be new, the final step in the Teague analysis requires the court to determine whether the rule nonetheless falls within one of the two narrow exceptions to the Teague doctrine. 520 U.S., at 527, 117 S.Ct., at 1524–1525. The first, limited exception is for new rules “forbidding criminal punishment of certain primary conduct [and] rules prohibiting a certain category of punishment for a class of defendants because of their status...