Split Massachusetts top court rules “life without parole for emerging adults” violates state constitution

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court today handed down a very legnthy ruling, reflecting a 4-to-3 vote among the justices, addressing a constitutional challenge to LWOP sentencing imposed on persons under 21 at the time of thier offense. The ruling of the majoirty in Commonwealth v. Mattis, No. SJC-11693 (Mass. Jan. 11, 2024) (available here), gets started this way:

When it comes to determining whether a punishment is constitutional under either the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution or art. 26 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights, youth matters.  See, e.g., Miller v. Alabama, 567 U.S. 460 (2012); Graham v. Florida, 560 U.S. 48 (2010); Roper v. Simmons, 543 U.S. 551 (2005); Diatchenko v. District Attorney for the Suffolk Dist., 466 Mass. 655 (2013) (Diatchenko I), S.C., 471 Mass. 12 (2015).  In Miller, supra at 465, 476, the United States Supreme Court struck down mandatory life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for juveniles based in part on the “mitigating qualities of youth.”  Approximately one and one-half years later, this court went further than Miller and concluded that sentencing a juvenile to life without parole in any circumstance would violate art. 26.  See Diatchenko I, supra at 669-670.

The defendant, Sheldon Mattis, was convicted of murder in the first degree, among other charges, and was sentenced to a mandatory term of life in prison without the possibility of parole, see G. L. c. 265, § 2 (a). Commonwealth v. Watt, 484 Mass. 742, 754-756 (2020).  On appeal, he challenged the constitutionality of his sentence as applied to him. He argued that because he was eighteen years old at the time of the murder, he is entitled to the same protection as juvenile offenders (i.e., those from fourteen to seventeen years of age) convicted of murder in the first degree, who receive a term of life with the possibility of parole. See G. L. c. 265, § 2 (b).

Here, we consider whether our holding in Diatchenko I should be extended to apply to emerging adults, that is, those who were eighteen, nineteen, and twenty years of age when they committed the crime.  Based on precedent and contemporary standards of decency in the Commonwealth and elsewhere, we conclude that the answer is yes.

There are a number of concurrences and dissents, and here are a few paragraphs paragraph from the start of the lead dissent authored by Justice Jowy:

I cannot say that society, through its elected officials, may not express its revulsion of the crime of murder in the first degree by imposing a punishment of life without the possibility of parole on adults without offending our Declaration of Rights.  Therefore, I respectfully dissent….

Our assessment under art. 26 is not whether the mandatory imposition of life without the possibility of parole for individuals from eighteen to twenty-one is, in our view, wise, prudent, or even best for society.  Our inquiry is limited to whether the punishment, chosen by the Legislature, is so disproportionate that it reaches the level of cruel or unusual. See Diatchenko I, 466 Mass. at 669.  Because, under our contemporary standards of decency and precedent, the mandatory imposition of life without the possibility of parole on adults who commit murder in the first degree when they are from eighteen to twenty-one is not “so disproportionate” that “it ‘shocks the conscience and offends fundamental notions of human dignity,'” id., quoting Cepulonis, 384 Mass. at 497, the sentence does not violate art. 26’s proscription against cruel or unusual punishment. It therefore must be upheld.