By Mike Mosedale
BridgeTower Media Newswires
MINNEAPOLIS — Mahdi Hassan Ali will be 107 years old before he gets a chance at freedom.
Does the prison sentence violate the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment?
That question came before the Minnesota Supreme Court last week as the justices wrestled with Ali’s sentence, for the second time, against the backdrop of an evolving body of constitutional law on permissible punishments for defendants who, like Ali, committed their crimes before reaching adulthood.
Citing a series of U.S. Supreme Court decisions, Leslie Rosenberg, an assistant state public defender, urged the justices to overturn a sentence that all but assures her client will die behind bars.
“The U.S. Supreme Court, with all of its juvenile justice jurisprudence starting as far back as 2005, has stated that you can try to treat children as adults but they are not adults,” said Rosenberg. “They are
categorically different, and different rules apply.”
Rosenberg said those rules don’t guarantee that Ali will ever be set free but do require that he be provided “meaningful opportunity” to make the case for his eventual release.
While there was plenty of back and forth about the constitutionality of that sentence, there was no debate about the appalling nature of the crime that landed Ali behind bars — a botched 2010 robbery at the Seward Market and Halal Meat in south Minneapolis which culminated with the execution-style slaying of three people.
After Ali was certified to stand trial as an adult, he was convicted by a jury of one count of first degree premeditated murder — which carries an automatic life sentence without the possibility of release — and two counts of felony murder.
Despite the automatic life sentence for the first count, Hennepin County District Court Judge Peter Cahill tacked on 30 years for each of the felony murder counts, to be served consecutively.
At the time, the judge explained that he wanted to ensure Ali would not go free in the event of some future reduction in the penalty for first degree premeditated murder.
That happened about seven months later when, in the summer of 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its opinion Miller v. Alabama and said that laws providing for automatic life sentences are unconstitutional when applied to juveniles.
As with many of the high court’s prior decisions involving juvenile justice, the Miller decision reflected the view of many neuroscientists that teenagers are less culpable for criminal acts than adults because, as
the majority put it, their still-developing brains make them more prone to “immaturity, impetuosity, and failure to appreciate risks and consequences.”
Following Miller, Ali petitioned the Minnesota Supreme Court for relief. The court, in a divided opinion penned by Chief Justice Lorie Gildea, remanded for resentencing on the premeditated murder charge but let the two consecutive 30-year sentences stand.
Last January, Cahill sentenced Ali to an additional 30 years on that count, meaning that Ali will have to spend 90 years behind bars before becoming eligible for release.
On Tuesday, several justices expressed skepticism about Rosenberg’s contention that Ali’s second sentence still runs afoul of Miller.
Gildea and Justice G. Barry Anderson pressed repeatedly on one point in particular: Isn’t Ali’s case fundamentally different because, unlike the teen offender in Miller, he killed more than one person?
No, answered Rosenberg, adding “that’s why Miller was such a paradigm switch.”
At that point, Justice David Lillehaug joined in.
“So, as I understand it, your client’s position would be that an individual could commit multiple homicides — blows up a building here, a few weeks later blows up a building there, kills many, many people — and the number of victims is irrelevant. The focus is simply that he’s a juvenile,” said Lillehaug.
Rosenberg said such reasoning is consistent with the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2005 holding in Roper v. Simmons, which categorically prohibited the imposition of the death penalty for crimes committed before the perpetrator turned 18. Under Roper, Rosenberg said, it doesn’t matter if a juvenile defendant kills one person or 100, he still can’t be executed.
Gildea, in particular, seemed bothered by the implications.
“Our own jurisprudence reflects concern for justice for each individual victim of a crime,” she said. “I think what you’re asking us to do is inconsistent with our own jurisprudence.”
“This case is not about dishonoring victims or not recognizing multiple victims. It’s not even about releasing the defendant,” Rosenberg replied. “It’s simply about honoring and following the United States Supreme Court’s binding precedent that, for a juvenile, we give meaningful opportunity for release.”
Arguing for the state, Assistant Hennepin County Attorney Jean Burdorf picked up on the multiple victim theme, saying that neither Miller nor Montgomery v. Louisiana (a 2016 SCOTUS case that made Miller retroactive) addressed the key issue in Ali: the proportionality of consecutive sentences for cases involving multiple murders.
That elicited a skeptical line of inquiry from Justice Margaret Chutich. “It seems like each successive case makes it clearer and clear that it’s about a principle that children are different, so the penological justifications aren’t the same as for adults,” Chutich said.
In her closing statements, Burdorf said the court, when weighing the justifications for Ali’s consecutive sentences, should take into account society’s need for retribution.
“As I was getting ready for this oral argument, my colleague said, ‘Don’t use the word retribution.’ We don’t like to say it because it makes us sound Minnesota mean. But I’m going to say it,” Burdorf ventured, adding: “Society does have a right to express moral indignation about a person’s behavior through the use of punishment.”
At the heart of Ali’s appeal, in Burdorf’s view, is the notion that “no matter how many people you kill, no matter how many victims you have, the presumptive sentence remains the same.”
As a practical matter, the adoption of such a principle might incentivize more bloodshed because, she said, it “essentially encourages anyone who shoots someone during a robbery to kill all the witnesses.”
Perry Moriearty, a University of Minnesota law professor and the director of the Child Advocacy and Juvenile Justice Clinic, said she was puzzled by the court’s focus on the number of victims as a key factor in evaluating Ali’s Eighth Amendment claim.
“To take the Minnesota Supreme Court’s inquiry to its logical conclusion, no Eighth Amendment rule promulgated by the U.S. Supreme Court would apply in multi-victim cases unless the court specifically said so,” said Moriearty. “So despite Roper, we could still execute juveniles if they killed more than one individual. Despite Atkins [v. Virginia], we could still execute mentally disabled defendants if they killed more than one individual. Despite Kennedy [v. Louisiana], we could still execute those convicted of sexual assault of a child if they assaulted more than one child.”
“In my opinion, that is not how we should read this country’s Eighth Amendment jurisprudence,” added Moriearty, who served as local counsel for the Juvenile Law Center, which filed an amicus brief in the case.
No matter how the Minnesota Supreme Court comes down in Ali, it likely will find itself confronting the issue again in the near future.
Moriearty said she is currently representing two clients who were sentenced to life without the possibility of release for crimes committed as juveniles.
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