Supreme Court Associate Justice Kennedy identified “retribution, deterrence, incapacitation, and rehabilitation” as “the goals of penal sanctions that have been recognized as legitimate.” Graham v. Florida. http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-7412Modified.pdf
The majority opinion in Graham discovers that “juveniles are more capable of change than are adults, and their actions are less likely to be evidence of ‘irretrievably depraved character’ than are the actions of adults.” Sentencing a juvenile to life in prison without the possibility of parole is counter conducive to all goals of penal sanctions. Juveniles who commit serious crimes must be appropriately sentenced to pay for the consequences of their criminal activity, but, as Justice Kennedy cited from Roper and Thompson v. Oklahoma “’juvenile offenders cannot with reliability be classified among the worst offenders.’ A juvenile is not absolved of responsibility for his actions, but his transgression ‘is not as morally reprehensible as that of an adult.’”
The problem
The Iowa Legislature must conform to the holding in Graham. “That for a juvenile offender who did not commit homicide the Eighth Amendment forbids the sentence of life without parole.” Justice Kennedy expounds:
There is a line “between homicide and other serious violent offenses against the individual.” Serious nonhomicide crimes “may be devastating in their harm . . . but ‘in terms of moral depravity and of the injury to the person and to the public,’ . . . they cannot be compared to murder in their ‘severity and irrevocability.’” This is because “life is over for the victim of the murderer,” but for the victim of even a very serious nonhomicide crime, “life . . . is not over and normally is not beyond repair.”
Iowa law provides for a life sentence under several circumstances. The most obvious, murder in the first degree is punishable by life in prison without the possibility of parole. The Court has made it clear that certain sanctions must be removed from the options of a sentencing court in Iowa when applied to a juvenile defendant. Those sanctions include:
- Sexual assault in the first degree (“in the course of committing sexual abuse the person causes another serious injury.”
- Second degree sexual assault is a life without parole sentence when the “person commits sexual abuse” and the victim “is under the age of twelve.”
- Kidnapping “when the person kidnapped, as a consequence of the kidnapping, suffers serious injury, or is intentionally subjected to torture or sexual abuse”.
- And section 902.14, pertaining to sexual abuse or lascivious acts with a child, which includes the following: A person commits a class “A” felony if the person commits a second or subsequent offense involving any combination of the following offenses:
- Sexual abuse in the second degree in violation of section 709.3.
- Sexual abuse in the third degree in violation of section 709.4.
- Lascivious acts with a child in violation of section 709.8, subsection 1 or 2.
Each of the first-tier bulleted crimes mentioned above carry with them a mandatory life sentence without the possibility of parole [“the court shall . . . commit the defendant into the custody of the director of the Iowa department of corrections for the rest of the defendant’s life.” That’s not an option for juvenile offenders any more under Graham. “What the State must do is give defendants . . . some meaningful opportunity to obtain release” The way Iowa Code is written now, there is no alternative but for the sentencing judge to strike down existing code as unconstitutional. What happens after that is anyone’s guess.
The Court discusses several alternatives and schemes that might be used to get around its holding. Justice Kennedy examines the arguments of the states’ brief (of which Iowa Attorney General Thomas Miller is one), and discredits each argument one-by-one. So eloquently put, Justice Kennedy writes:
A categorical rule gives all juvenile nonhomicide offenders a chance to demonstrate maturity and reform. The juvenile should not be deprived of the opportunity to achieve maturity of judgment and self-recognition of human worth and potential. In Roper, that deprivation resulted from an execution that brought life to its end. Here, though by a different dynamic, the same concerns apply. Life in prison without the possibility of parole gives no chance for fulfillment outside prison walls, no chance for reconciliation with society, no hope. Maturity can lead to that considered reflection which is the foundation for remorse, renewal, and rehabilitation. A young person who knows that he or she has no chance to leave prison before life’s end has little incentive to become a responsible individual. In some prisons, moreover, the system itself becomes complicit in the lack of development. As noted above, it is the policy in some prisons to withhold counseling, education, and rehabilitation programs for those who are ineligible for parole consideration. A categorical rule against life without parole for juvenile nonhomicide offenders avoids the perverse consequence in which the lack of maturity that led to an offender’s crime is reinforced by the prison term.
Iowa has very little choice but to amend its laws in order to comply with Graham. When the SCOTUS mentions states besides Florida as those that send juveniles to a lifetime of incarceration it mentions Iowa. What it doesn’t mention is that Iowa ranks third on a list of states that incarcerate juveniles for life for committing nonhomicide crimes.