Supreme Court rejects appeal of life sentences for Arizona juveniles
Despite the dissent of its three liberal members, the Supreme Court said on tuesday that it would not hear an appeal from an Arizona juvenile offender sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
As usual, the court gave no reasons for dismissing the case, which could have consequences for dozens of prisoners.
The case involves Lonnie Bassett, who was convicted of two murders in 2004, when he was 16. Mr. Bassett was in the backseat of a car when he shot the driver and a passenger.
When Mr. Bassett was convicted in 2006, Arizona law did not give the judge the option to impose a sentence other than life in prison without the possibility of parole.
But a 2012 Supreme Court ruling, Miller vs. Alabamarejected mandatory sentences for juveniles who committed murder before they turned 18. To be constitutional, the court said, state laws must at least give judges the option of sentencing juvenile offenders to life in prison with the possibility of parole.
Yet the Arizona Supreme Court has upheld Mr. Bassett’s sentence last year, arguing that unusual features of Arizona’s criminal law prevented the court from violating the Miller ruling.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joining Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, argued that the state court’s decision violated precedent.
“Arizona’s criminal justice system left no room for a parole-eligible sentence in this case,” she wrote. “No one disputes that.”
The Arizona Supreme Court agreed, but held that an idiosyncratic feature of the state law, which allows judges to choose between “natural life” without the possibility of release on any grounds and life without parole but with the theoretical possibility of a parole from the governor, makes the law constitutional.
The court rejected the usual interpretation of the prevailing precedent, saying, “Miller and his progeny do not specifically require the availability of parole when sentencing a juvenile offender.”
Attorneys for Mr. Bassett has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to interveneand said his case could determine the fate of more than two dozen other juvenile delinquents. The case, they wrote, “raises extraordinarily important questions about games and the supremacy of federal law.”
In a short urging the Supreme Court not to hear the case, Bassett vs ArizonaNo. 23-830, Arizona Attorney General Kristin K. Mayes chose not to defend the state Supreme Court’s reasoning.
“Conditional release is constitutionally required,” Ms. Mayes wrote. “This Court’s precedents have firmly established that fact, and Arizona does not disagree.”
Instead, she defended the outcome of the case on another ground.
When Mr. Bassett was sentenced, she wrote, there was “a widespread misconception among Arizona judges and attorneys” that one provision of the challenged state law allowed for life sentences with the possibility of parole. She added that “the misconception appears to have been universal.”
According to Justice Sotomayor, this argument was flawed.
“This argument requires speculation, based on no evidence, about the possibility of a judge’s two-decade-old mistaken belief about state law,” she wrote. “Miller will not permit such a thing.”
