Split Mississippi appellate court upholds, against Eighth Amendment challenge, an LWOP habitual-offender sentence for marijuana possession

As report in this AP piece, the “Mississippi Court of Appeals on Tuesday upheld a life sentence for a man convicted of a marijuana possession charge because he had previous convictions and those made him a habitual offender.” Here is bit more about the ruling from the AP:

Allen Russell, 38, was sentenced to life in Forrest County in 2019 after a jury found him guilty of possession of more than 30 grams (1.05 ounces) of marijuana.

In Mississippi, a person can be sentenced to life without parole after serving at least one year in prison on two separate felonies, one of which must be a violent offense. Russell was convicted on two home burglaries in 2004 and for unlawful possession of a firearm in 2015. By law, burglary is a violent offense in Mississippi, whether or not there is proof that violence occurred. That was not the case when Russell was sentenced for home burglary in 2004. Then, burglary was only considered a violent crime if there was proof of violence. The law changed in 2014.

In his appeal, Russell argued that a life sentence constitutes “cruel and unusual punishment and is grossly disproportionate” to his crime of marijuana possession. The Court of Appeals disagreed in its majority opinion, stating that Russell’s life sentence is in accordance with Mississippi law. Russell is not being sentenced solely for having marijuana, but for being a habitual offender, the judges said.

But several dissenting judges argued that the court can — and should — make exceptions. “The purpose of the criminal justice system is to punish those who break the law, deter them from making similar mistakes, and give them the opportunity to become productive members of society,” Judge Latrice Westbrooks wrote. “The fact that judges are not routinely given the ability to exercise discretion in sentencing all habitual offenders is completely at odds with this goal.”

The full opinions in Russell v. Mississippi, NO. 2019-KA-01670-COA (Miss. Ct. App. May 11, 2021), are available here.  Here is the start and another part of the majority opinion:

A Forrest County jury found Allen Russell guilty of possession of marijuana in an amount greater than 30 grams but less than 250 grams. The Forrest County Circuit Court sentenced Russell as a violent habitual offender under Mississippi Code Annotated section 99-19-83 (Rev. 2015) to life imprisonment in the custody of the Mississippi Department of Corrections (MDOC) without eligibility for probation or parole. On appeal from the circuit court’s judgment, Russell argues that his sentence constitutes cruel and unusual punishment and is grossly disproportionate to his felony conviction. Finding no error, we affirm….

Here, the State’s evidence established that Russell had two prior separate felony convictions for burglary of a dwelling, for which he was sentenced to and served over one year in MDOC’s custody on each conviction.  The State also presented evidence that Russell was later convicted of possession of a firearm by a felon and sentenced to ten years with eight years suspended and two years to serve, followed by five years of post-release supervision.  Based on such evidence, the circuit court justifiably found Russell to be a violent habitual offender under section 99-19-83 and sentenced him to life imprisonment in MDOC’s custody without eligibility for probation or parole.  Because Russell has failed to prove the threshold requirement of gross disproportionality, and because his habitual-offender sentence fell within the statutory guidelines, we conclude that his sentence constituted “a constitutionally permissible punishment for his most recent crime . . . .” Miller, 225 So. 3d at 16 (¶17). We therefore find this issue lacks merit.

One of the dissents begins this way:

In Solem v. Helm, 466 U.S. 277 (1983), the United States Supreme Court held that a life without parole sentence for a recidivist criminal convicted of a relatively low-level felony violated the Eighth Amendment. In terms of the gravity of his present offense and the extent and seriousness of his criminal history, I cannot draw any material distinction between Allen Russell and the defendant in Solem. Thus, I conclude that we are bound under Solem to vacate Russell’s life without parole sentence. Accordingly, I respectfully dissent

Because I was stunned to see an LWOP sentence for marijuana possession and due to the description in the opinion concerning how the defendant was found in possession of marijuana, I did a little bit of extra research about Allen Russell.  Though not mentioned in this appellate ruling, this local article from late 2017 reports that Russell was being arrested on murder charges at the time he was found to be in possession of marijuana.  Though I could find no report of Russell being convicted of (or even tried on) a homicide charge, I am inclined to suspect that this background may have played at least some role in how Russell was initially charged by prosecutors and ultimately sentenced for his marijuana possession.

I presume that this case will now be appealed to the Mississippi Supreme Court and perhaps the US Supreme Court if the Mississippi courts continuing to uphold this extreme sentence. I would think that, if the Eighth Amendment is to place any limit at all the length of prison sentences imposed on adult offenders, an LWOP sentence for possessing a small amount of marijuana ought to be subject to very serious scrutiny.  And yet, SCOTUS has a history of upholding extreme recidivism-based sentences (Ewing v. California, 538 U.S. 11 (2003), being the most recent example), and so the past and present work of the Supreme Court in this arena should not provide much basis for Russell to be especially optimistic regarding further appeals.