Supreme Court: 90-year sentence isn't the same as life

Majority relied in part on dictum from 1892 U.S. Supreme Court decision

By Mike Mosedale
BridgeTower Media Newswires
 
MINNEAPOLIS — A 90-year minimum sentence for the teenage shooter in a triple homicide does not violate the United States Supreme Court’s prohibition against giving juveniles sentences of natural life in all but the rarest of circumstances.

At least, that’s the view of a majority of the Minnesota Supreme Court, which on Wednesday rejected Mahdi Hassan Ali’s argument that three consecutive, 30-year sentences amount to cruel and unusual punishment.

The majority opinion, penned by Justice Natalie Hudson, hinges on fine distinctions between Ali’s case and a line of recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions that have restricted the permissible punishments for offenders who committed their crimes before reaching adulthood.

In its landmark 2012 decision, Alabama v. Miller, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that, for juvenile offenders, the Eighth Amendment bars the imposition of automatic life sentences without the possibility of release.

But, according to the majority on the Minnesota Supreme Court, that holding does not apply in cases like Ali’s, where the defendant receives several lengthy consecutive sentences that are “the functional equivalent” of a life sentence.

In turning back Ali’s challenge, the majority relied in part on dictum from a 1892 U.S. Supreme Court decision, O’Neil v. Vermont. In O’Neil, the high court stated that an Eighth Amendment analysis of a consecutive sentence should focus on the constitutionality of the sanction for each individual offense, not the constitutionality of the aggregate sentence.

Justice Margaret Chutich, the lone dissenter, faulted the majority’s reliance on O’Neil, which, she wrote, “runs headlong into the essence” of the U.S. Supreme Court’s much more recent rulings on the Eighth Amendment and juvenile sentences.

That line of cases began with the high court’s 2005 decision in Roper v. Simmons (which adopted a categorical ban on death sentences for juveniles) continued with its 2010 decision in Graham v. Florida (prohibiting life imprisonment for juveniles convicted of crimes other than homicide) and culminated with its 2012 decision in Miller (barring all automatic life sentences for juveniles).

In 2016, the high court further refined Miller with Montgomery v. Louisiana, which said that courts cannot sentence juveniles to life without possibility of release absent a determination that they are “the rarest of juvenile offenders, those whose crimes reflect permanent incorrigibility.”

In her dissent, Chutich acknowledged that the U.S. Supreme Court has not squarely addressed the precise issue raised by Ali: whether consecutive sentences for multiple acts that amount to a functional life sentence violate Miller and Montgomery.

“But because the force and logic behind the principle that ‘children are constitutionally different from adults in their level of culpability’ undoubtedly encompasses cases in which a juvenile defendant commits multiple offenses during a single criminal episode, as happened here, I respectfully dissent,” Chutich wrote, quoting from Montgomery.

Leslie Rosenberg, the appellate public defender who represented Ali on appeal, praised Chutich for “getting it right.”

Rosenberg faulted the majority for relying on the century-plus old O’Neil to bolster a decision she said “had no basis in law, fact or logic.”

“It really doesn’t make sense,” Rosenberg commented. “If there’s one area of law where we don’t look back, it’s the Eighth Amendment. Eighth Amendment jurisprudence says that we look to evolving standards of decency to determine what is cruel and unusual punishment.”

Rosenberg said no decision has been made yet on how to proceed but expressed confidence that the court’s decision in Ali will ultimately be reversed.

“I think the United States Supreme Courts’ 15 years of juvenile justice jurisprudence has been very clear: children are fundamentally different from adults,” Rosenberg said. “The Minnesota Supreme Court, by holding to what they believe is the letter of the law, is not understanding that jurisprudence.”

Ali’s legal travails date back to 2010, when three people were executed in the course of a botched robbery at Seward Market and Halal Meat in south Minneapolis.

Following a jury trial, Ali received an automatic life sentence without the possibility of release for his conviction on one count of first-degree premeditated murder, as well as a pair of consecutive 30-year minimum sentences for two felony murder convictions.

But about seven months after Hennepin County District Judge Peter Cahill handed down that sentence, the United States Supreme Court decided Miller v. Alabama.

On appeal, the Minnesota Supreme Court let Ali’s two 30-year sentences stand but, citing Miller, remanded the first-degree premeditated murder count for resentencing.  Cahill then gave Ali an additional 30 years, which spurred the latest trip to the Supreme Court.

In its ruling, the majority brushed aside Ali’s other arguments, including an equal protection claim. On appeal, Ali contended that Cahill should have conducted a so-called “Miller/Montgomery hearing” to determine whether he belonged to that subset of juvenile offenders whose crimes reflect “irreparable corruption.”

But the majority said Ali waited too long to raise the argument and thus deemed the issue waived.

Finally, the majority rejected Ali’s claim that, even if his sentence were deemed constitutionally permissible, Cahill abused his discretion with the lengthy sentence. A review of the sentences given to a handful of other juvenile offenders who were convicted of multiple shows that Ali’s sentence is comparable, the majority said.

For her part, Chutich wrote that too much time had passed to conduct “a fair and meaningful Miller/Montgomery hearing” and argued the case should be remanded to the district court for re-sentencing on all three counts.
Even if Ali were to receive three concurrent sentences with the 30-year minimum, Chutich wrote, Ali would not be eligible for release before he turns 47 and, under the current statutory scheme, still might never go free.