Jedlicka v. State

Seth D. Jedlicka v. State of Maryland No. 30, September Term 2021 Criminal Procedure – Constitutional Law – Juvenile Offenders – Life Sentences. In Carter v. State, 461 Md. 295 (2018), the Court set forth a test for determining whether a lengthy term-of-years sentence with a significant period of parole ineligibility is a de facto sentence of life without the possibility of parole, which the Eighth Amendment forbids for juvenile non-homicide offenders. Under that test, an aggregate 60-year sentence with parole eligibility after 25 years is not a de facto life sentence. Criminal Procedure – Constitutional Law – Sentencing of Juvenile Offender.

A sentence of life with all but 60 years suspended is not grossly disproportionate for a juvenile offender convicted of first-degree felony murder. Criminal Procedure – Constitutional Law – Sentencing of Juvenile Offender – Individualized Consideration. As outlined in Miller v. Alabama, 567 U.S. 460 (2012), before a court sentences a juvenile offender to life in prison without the possibility of parole, the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution requires that the offender receive an individualized sentencing proceeding in which the sentencing court has discretion to impose a lesser sentence and can consider the offender’s youth and attendant circumstances as mitigating factors. This requirement applies only to cases in which a juvenile homicide offender is sentenced to life without parole and not to cases involving a lesser sentence.

Criminal Procedure – Constitutional Law – Maryland Constitution – Sentencing of Juvenile Offender. Article 25 of the Maryland Declaration of Rights is generally interpreted coextensively with the Eighth Amendment of the United States Constitution. In general, Article 25 does not require a different process than the Eighth Amendment for the sentencing of a juvenile offender who receives a sentence of life in prison with the possibility of parole. Circuit Court for Cecil County Case No. 07-K-10-000470 Argued: January 11, 2022 IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF MARYLAND No. 30 September Term, 2021 SETH D. JEDLICKA V. STATE OF MARYLAND *Getty, C.J., *McDonald Watts Hotten Booth Biran Gould, JJ.

Opinion by McDonald, J. Filed: August 26, 2022 *Getty, C.J., and McDonald, J., now Senior Judges, participated in the hearing and conference of this case while active members of this Court. After being recalled pursuant to Maryland Constitution, Article IV, §3A, they also participated in the decision and adoption of this opinion. Pursuant to the Maryland Uniform Electronic Legal Materials Act (§§ 10-1601 et seq. of the State Government Article) this document is authentic. 2023-01-18 16:18-05:00 Gregory Hilton, Clerk Over the last two decades, there have been significant developments in the law governing the sentencing, and the potential release from confinement, of juvenile offenders who commit serious crimes. Changes have come at the state and federal levels, through both the courts and the legislative process.

The Supreme Court has held that the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution categorically forbids sentencing a juvenile non-homicide offender to life without the possibility of parole and requires an individualized sentencing process before such a sentence may be imposed on a juvenile homicide offender.1 This Court has determined that certain lengthy sentences expressed as a term of years with a lengthy period of ineligibility for parole may be de facto sentences of life without parole and therefore may also violate the Eighth Amendment when imposed on juvenile non-homicide offenders.2 The General Assembly has both reformed the parole process and, for juvenile offenders sentenced as adults, provided another avenue for release of those who can demonstrate maturity and rehabilitation following a substantial period of incarceration.3 In 2010, Petitioner Seth Jedlicka was convicted of first-degree felony murder and other crimes for his involvement, at age 16, in a burglary that resulted in the murder of one of the victims. In 2011, he was sentenced to life in prison with all but 60 years suspended 1 Graham v. Florida, 560 U.S. 48 (2010); Miller v. Alabama, 567 U.S. 460 (2012). 2 Carter v. State, 461 Md. 295 (2018). 3 Chapter 61, Laws of Maryland 2021 (Juvenile Restoration Act); Chapter 30, 1st Spec. Sess., Laws of Maryland 2021 (eliminating requirement for Governor’s approval for parole of inmate serving life sentence). for the murder conviction and a concurrent aggregate 60-year sentence for the other offenses. He will be eligible for parole after serving 25 years of his sentence, at which time he will be 42 years old.

Mr. Jedlicka filed a motion to correct an illegal sentence arguing that his sentencing proceeding failed to comply with the constitutional protections recognized in recent decisions of the Supreme Court and this Court. The Circuit Court and the Court of Special Appeals both rejected Mr. Jedlicka’s argument. We agree. Mr. Jedlicka’s sentence is not a de facto sentence of life without parole.

He will have multiple meaningful opportunities for release based on demonstrated maturity and rehabilitation with a hope of spending some significant portion of his life outside of prison. And, in any event, his sentencing proceeding did not violate the Eighth Amendment’s application to certain juvenile offenders, as construed by recent Supreme Court decisions. I Background A. Developments in the Sentencing of Juvenile Offenders 1. Recent Case Law on Life Sentences and Juvenile Offenders Prohibiting life without parole sentences for juvenile non-homicide offenders In 2010, in the first of a series of four decisions on life sentences and juvenile offenders, the Supreme Court held that, for a juvenile non-homicide offender, the Eighth Amendment forbids imposition of a sentence of life without parole.

Graham v. Florida, 2 560 U.S. 48 (2010).4 Such offenders must have “some meaningful opportunity to obtain release based on demonstrated maturity and rehabilitation.” Id. at 75 . The Court held that the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment embodies the “precept of justice that punishment for crime should be graduated and proportioned to the offense.” Id. at 59 , quoting Weems v. United States, 217 U.S. 349, 367 (1910). The Court acknowledged that “when compared to an adult murderer, a juvenile offender who did not kill or intend to kill has a twice diminished moral culpability. The age of the offender and the nature of the crime each bear on the analysis.” Id. at 69.

The Court also determined that none of the four legitimate penological objectives – retribution, deterrence, incapacitation, and rehabilitation – justified such a sentence. Id. at 71. Thus, in the specific case of juvenile non-homicide offenders, the punishment of life without parole is categorically disproportionate. Dealing with de facto sentences of life without parole Applying the holding in Graham, this Court later held that a lengthy term-of-years sentence with a remote possibility of parole can, in certain circumstances, be a de facto sentence of life without parole that is also prohibited by the Eighth Amendment for juvenile offenders.

Carter v. State, 461 Md. 295, 350 (2018). This conclusion was a matter of common sense; otherwise, a sentencing court could easily circumvent the constraints of the Eighth Amendment by stating a sentence in numerical terms that exceed any reasonable possibility of parole during the defendant’s life. Id. at 347-49 . The Court also concluded 4 The other three cases are Miller v. Alabama, 567 U.S. 460 (2012); Montgomery v. Louisiana, 577 U.S. 190 (2016); and Jones v. Mississippi, 141 S. Ct. 1307 (2021). 3 that no penological theory justified treating a sentence that effectively condemned a juvenile non-homicide offender to die in prison any differently than an explicit sentence of life without parole.

Id. at 350. The Court’s holding in Carter necessarily raised the question of when a term of years is a de facto life-without-parole sentence that offends the Eighth Amendment. The Court declined to identify a specific period of parole ineligibility that equates to a de facto life sentence without parole. A complicating aspect of some term-of-years sentences is that they aggregate penalties imposed for multiple criminal episodes.

When determining whether a given sentence is cruel or unusual, a reviewing court cannot ignore the context in which the sentence was imposed. Thus, the Court outlined a two-step analysis in which a reviewing court determines (1) whether the terms of the sentence potentially equate to life without parole, and (2) when the sentence is an aggregate one based on multiple convictions, whether the crimes underlying those convictions are closely related in time and circumstance. The first part of the analysis, which applies to any term-of-years sentence, assesses the period of parole ineligibility in light of certain “benchmarks.” The benchmarks identified in Carter included: (1) the offender’s natural life expectancy; (2) the parole eligibility of an offender serving a life sentence; (3) a 50-year threshold; (4) legislative reforms in the wake of Graham; and (5) the typical retirement age. 461 Md. at 351-56 . The Court did not explicitly adopt any single benchmark, preferring instead to allow reviewing courts flexibility in conducting the analysis. 4 When a lengthy term-of-years sentence results from a single conviction, the reviewing court need not look beyond the benchmarks to assess whether the sentence is in fact one of life without parole.

However, the second step is required when a particular sentence that appears under the benchmarks to equate to a de facto sentence of life is actually the aggregate of multiple sentences for different convictions. This second step applies only to “stacked” sentences that represent the aggregation of multiple terms of incarceration. 461 Md. at 356-61 . Here, the Carter Court borrowed two related principles from prior cases regarding proportionality – that whether a sentence is excessive under the Eighth Amendment “can never be litigated in the abstract but must be assessed on a case- by-case basis” and that “proportionality [is measured] not by comparing the sentence with the label of the crime … but by comparing the sentence with the behavior of the criminal and the consequences of his act.” Id. at 356 , quoting Thomas v. State, 333 Md. 84, 97 (1993). To guide courts in conducting a similar case-by-case review in the specific context of identifying a de facto life-without-parole sentence, the Court sketched out a spectrum of juvenile offender culpability: … At one end of the spectrum, an individual may embark on a serious crime spree, involving, for example, a series of armed robberies or sexual assaults over weeks or months or even years.

Whether the crimes are prosecuted together or separately, the courts may sentence the individual to significant periods of incarceration for each incident. These circumstances are least likely to warrant the aggregate sentence being treated as a de facto life sentence. The number of crimes, their seriousness, and the opportunity for the juvenile to reflect before each bad decision also makes it less likely that the aggregate sentence is constitutionally disproportionate even after taking youth and attendant characteristics into account. At the other end of the spectrum is a situation where an individual is involved in one event or makes one bad decision that, for various reasons, 5 may involve several separate crimes that do not merge into one another for sentencing purposes and for which consecutive sentences may be imposed.

Here, the argument to treat a lengthy stacked sentence as if it were a de facto life sentence is strongest. There is little, if any, opportunity to reflect upon or abandon the underlying conduct between individual offenses. The initial decision should usually be treated the same as one to commit a single criminal offense carrying a sentence of life without parole. Id. at 356-57.5 Individualized sentencing process In Miller v. Alabama, 567 U.S. 460, 479 (2012), the Supreme Court held that “the Eighth Amendment forbids a sentencing scheme that mandates life in prison without possibility of parole for juvenile offenders.” The Court reasoned that “[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.” Id.

In Montgomery v. 5 In Carter, the Court applied this two-step analysis to a case of a defendant who had been sentenced to serve four consecutive 25-year terms – i.e., a total of 100 years in prison – for convictions on four counts of first-degree assault. Under Maryland Code, Correctional Services Article, §7-301(c)(1)(i), the defendant would not be eligible for parole until he had served half of the aggregate sentence for violent crimes – 50 years. The Court concluded that the sentence, if it had been imposed for a single conviction, would be considered a de facto sentence of life without parole under most of the benchmarks: the 50-year period of parole ineligibility far exceeded the time of parole eligibility for a defendant sentenced to life in prison in Maryland (15 years at that time), exceeded the threshold duration recognized by most courts and legislatures (significantly less than 50 years), and would not afford the defendant an opportunity for release until after the typical retirement date for someone of his age. 461 Md. at 362 . The Court therefore moved on to the second step of the analysis.

It determined that the circumstances of the defendant’s stacked sentence were toward the lower end of the spectrum. While the crimes were serious, they were all part of a single, brief incident. Moreover, the defendant had been convicted as an aider and abettor of the offenses, rather than as a principal. The Court concluded that the defendant’s aggregate sentence amounted to one of life without parole and concluded that he must be resentenced to comply with the Eighth Amendment, as interpreted in Graham. 461 Md. at 363-64 . 6 Louisiana, 577 U.S. 190 , 208-09 (2016), the Court clarified that Miller announced a substantive rule of constitutional law with retroactive effect.

The Court explained that Miller’s substantive guarantee – that a juvenile convicted of homicide will not be subject to a mandatory sentence of life without parole – necessarily has a procedural component, namely, “a hearing where ‘youth and its attendant characteristics’ are considered as sentencing factors.” Id. at 209-10, quoting Miller, 567 U.S. at 465 . Miller and Montgomery did not impose a formal factfinding requirement to satisfy the procedural component, instead leaving it to the states to implement the Court’s holding within their own criminal legal systems. Montgomery, 577 U.S. at 211 . This led to some confusion regarding what procedure, if any, a sentencing court must follow before imposing a discretionary life without parole sentence for a juvenile homicide offender.

The Supreme Court recently addressed this issue, holding that “[i]n a case involving an individual who was under 18 when he or she committed a homicide, a State’s discretionary sentencing system is both constitutionally necessary and constitutionally sufficient.” Jones v. Mississippi, 141 S. Ct. 1307, 1313 (2021). The Court explained that an on-the-record sentencing explanation is not required; “if the sentencer has discretion to consider the defendant’s youth, the sentencer necessarily will consider the defendant’s youth, especially if defense counsel advances an argument based on the defendant’s youth.” Id. at 1319 (emphasis in original). 2. The Juvenile Restoration Act In 2021, the General Assembly enacted the Juvenile Restoration Act (“JUVRA”) over the Governor’s veto. Chapter 61, Laws of Maryland 2021, codified at Maryland Code, 7 Criminal Procedure Article (“CP”), §§6-235, 8-110.

JUVRA made three significant changes to sentencing practices in Maryland for juvenile offenders convicted as adults. Specifically, it gave a sentencing court discretion to impose a sentence less than the minimum otherwise required by law, prospectively banned sentences of life without the possibility of parole, and authorized a juvenile offender sentenced before its effective date (October 1, 2021) who has spent more than 20 years in prison to file a motion to reduce the remaining sentence. Only the final provision is relevant here. An eligible offender who files a motion to reduce the offender’s remaining sentence is entitled to a hearing at which the offender must be present, either in person or by video.

CP §8-110(b). Notice of the hearing must be given to the victim or the victim’s representative. Id. Both the offender and the State may introduce evidence in support of or in opposition to the motion.

Id. Following the hearing, the court may reduce the duration of the offender’s sentence if the court concludes that (1) the individual is not a danger to the public; and (2) the interests of justice will be better served by a reduced sentence. CP §8-110(c). The statute outlines 10 factors – as well as “any other factor the court deems relevant” – that a court is to consider and address in a written decision, including: the individual’s age at the time of the offense; the nature of the offense and the history and characteristics of the individual; any statement offered by or on behalf of a victim of the offense; whether the individual has demonstrated maturity, rehabilitation, and fitness to reenter society; the extent of the individual’s role in the offense and whether and to what extent an adult was involved in the offense; and the diminished culpability of a juvenile as compared to an adult.

CP §8-110(d). If the offender’s motion is denied or granted in part, 8 the offender may file another motion after three years. A third and final motion may be filed after an additional three-year waiting period. CP §8-110(f).

Relief sought under JUVRA is distinct from and does not affect other terms of the sentence, such as the offender’s opportunity to seek parole. B. Facts and Proceedings 1. The Burglary and Murder In November 2009, Mr. Jedlicka, then age 16, participated in a late-night home invasion in Cecil County with three other young men: Joel Milburn (19), Anthony Melchor (16), and Karl Gladden-Postles (21). Mr. Milburn, the ringleader, believed that there was money in the home and had recruited the others to commit the burglary.

In the middle of the night, the four conspirators forcefully entered the home while its occupants – Terry, Geraldine, Terri Ann, and Tara McCoy – slept. At least three of the young men, including Mr. Jedlicka, carried firearms. Several of the men, including Mr. Jedlicka, forced their way into the bedroom of Terry and Geraldine McCoy, threatening to shoot them. During the episode, one of the assailants struck Terry McCoy in the eye, causing permanent injury.

Terry and Geraldine McCoy were then ordered to unlock two safes, which were emptied by the assailants. In another room of the house, Mr. Gladden-Postles fatally shot Terri Ann McCoy. Shortly thereafter, the group fled the house with jewelry taken from the McCoys’ safes. They made their way to Mr. Jedlicka’s home in Delaware, where they stored the jewelry until they sold it some days later. 9 In February 2010, police obtained an arrest warrant for Mr. Jedlicka, but were unable to locate him at his residence in Delaware.

A month later, he and Mr. Milburn were apprehended in Miami, Florida. 2. The Trial and Sentencing The four participants in the burglary were indicted in the Circuit Court for Cecil County. Three of the conspirators pled guilty; Mr. Jedlicka elected a bench trial. Mr. Melchor, who had pled guilty to armed robbery pursuant to a plea agreement with the State, testified at the trial and identified Mr. Jedlicka as one of the participants in the home invasion.

At the conclusion of the three-day trial in September 2010, the Circuit Court found Mr. Jedlicka guilty of common law conspiracy, first-degree felony murder, armed robbery, first-degree assault, first-degree burglary, theft of property valued over $100,000, and use of a firearm in the commission of a felony. Mr. Jedlicka was sentenced on May 14, 2011. The State sought a sentence of life without the possibility of parole. Defense counsel, emphasizing Mr. Jedlicka’s youth and diminished role in the offense, asked for a sentence of life imprisonment with all but 15 years suspended.

A pre-sentence investigation report was completed. In addition, the defense offered the testimony of a clinical psychologist who had evaluated Mr. Jedlicka and produced a report concerning his potential for rehabilitation that was submitted to the court. The psychologist, formerly an official at the Patuxent Institution, testified that he believed that Mr. Jedlicka was suitable for placement in the youth program at Patuxent. 10 In announcing Mr. Jedlicka’s sentence following the psychologist’s testimony, the Circuit Court stated that it was “extremely difficult” to devise an appropriate sentence. The court referred to the sentences given to two of Mr. Jedlicka’s conspirators following their guilty pleas.

Mr. Milburn, whom Mr. Melchor had identified as the mastermind of the burglary, had pled guilty to first-degree murder and was sentenced to life imprisonment with all but 40 years suspended. Mr. Gladden-Postles, the shooter, had pled guilty mid- trial to first-degree murder and received a sentence of life imprisonment with all but 75 years suspended. The court explained that, in its view, “Mr. Jedlicka should not serve a sentence as long as the shooter, but I think he certainly deserves a sentence longer than that given to Mr. Milburn.” Accordingly, the court sentenced Mr. Jedlicka to life imprisonment with all but 60 years suspended for the first-degree murder conviction and imposed an aggregate concurrent term of 60 years of incarceration followed by five years of probation, comprised of consecutive sentences for the armed robbery (20 years), first-degree assault (15 years), first-degree burglary (10 years), theft (10 years), firearms offense (5 years), and conspiracy (suspended sentence) charges. Thus, the overall sentence was a 60-year period of incarceration to be followed by five years of probation.

Mr. Jedlicka appealed, and the Court of Special Appeals affirmed his convictions in an unreported opinion. Jedlicka v. State, No. 197, Sept. Term 2011 (Md. Ct. Spec. App. May 16, 2012). 3. Parole Eligibility A defendant who was sentenced to life in prison before October 1, 2021, as Mr. Jedlicka was, is eligible for parole after serving 15 years (or the equivalent of 15 years 11 taking into account diminution