The Past, Present, and Future of North Carolina’s Harshest Punishment
North Carolina is one of only a handful of states that allow for the juvenile life without parole sentence and currently have prisoners incarcerated for a crime they committed while under the age of 18. Source: Scott Olson/Getty Images
The United States is the only country in the world that allows for those under the age of 18 to be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Even within the U.S., half of states ban the practice in addition to Washington D.C. In nine more states, no one is currently serving a life without parole sentence for a crime they committed as a juvenile.
North Carolina is one of the remaining 16 states that allow for the juvenile life without parole (JLWOP) sentence and currently have prisoners incarcerated for a crime they committed while under the age of 18. Since the practice was introduced in 1994, a series of legal battles nationally and within the state have slowly eroded the use of JLWOP, and one case is currently pending review before the state Supreme Court could effectively end the sentence for good.
The life without parole sentence in North Carolina effectively began during the transition from Fair Sentencing to Structured Sentencing in the state. The reason for the change was that the credit system under the Fair Sentencing procedure allowed for convicted felons to serve significantly less time in prison than their sentence would suggest.
Professor James Markham, the UNC School of Government’s Thomas Willis Lambeth Distinguished Chair in Public Policy explains that, “Under Fair Sentencing, there was this issue with the process of granting credits that would effectively cut felony sentences in half or even more.” The practice was not necessarily designed to aid felons, rather it was “motivated by the severe prison overcrowding problem in the 1980s and ‘90s to the point where the prison system was operating under the threat of federal lawsuit.”
However, the public became disillusioned with the sentencing practices due to the fact that felons would often serve significantly less time than was originally mandated by their sentence. According to Professor Markham, “there was an erosion of any sense that there was truth in the sentencing” at the time.
Motivated by this and other factors, the state changed to a system of Structured Sentencing that imposed a hard minimum sentence to avoid the large reductions in prison time served by convicted criminals under Fair Sentencing. Included in the change to Structured Sentencing was the removal of the possibility of parole after 20 years for “life sentences,” changing the definition of the sentence to truly mean the extent of a person’s natural life. Because North Carolina did not differentiate between juveniles and adults in the LWOP sentence at that time, this simultaneously created the juvenile life without parole sentence.
Another factor contributing to the change was the prominent “juvenile superpredator” theory sweeping the country in the 1990s. As a reaction to the increase in the number of juvenile homicides, many academics predicted that a wave of dangerous delinquents would threaten the safety of the country. Although the United States Surgeon General would later declare the “superpredator” theory to be a myth, its effects on public policy are indisputable. Between 1990 and 1996, forty states passed laws aimed at making it easier to try juveniles as adults. A lawyer at the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Juvenile Division commented in 1994 that, “These [juvenile] laws were drafted at a time when kids were throwing spitballs… Now they’re committing murders,” reflecting the dominant perspective on juvenile justice at the time.
Beginning in 2005, a steady series of federal Supreme Court cases were decided that granted more protections for juveniles due to their lack of maturity. First, the juvenile death penalty was found to be unconstitutional in Roper v. Simmons (2005). Notably in Roper, the American Medical Association (AMA) and American Psychological Association (APA) filed amicus briefs stating that juvenile immaturity is a function of a lack of physiological development in adolescent brains, rendering them less culpable for their actions.
In Graham v. Florida (2010), JLWOP was found unconstitutional for non-homicide offenses, however North Carolina courts had never entered such a sentence and the state was therefore relatively unaffected by the ruling. In Graham, the AMA and APA yet again filed briefs arguing against strict juvenile culpability due to discoveries in neuroscience.
In 2012, the federal Supreme Court handed down a landmark decision in Miller v. Alabama which found that JLWOP cannot be a mandatory sentence for any crime. Drawing upon earlier case law, Justice Elena Kagan writes in The Court’s majority opinion that, “Graham and Roper and our individualized sentencing cases alike teach that in imposing a State’s harshest penalties, a sentencer misses too much if he treats every child as an adult.”
After Miller, the North Carolina General Assembly was forced to pass a new law requiring sentencers to consider the defendant’s youth before deciding whether or not to hand down a sentence of life without parole, giving them the option to issue a lesser sentence instead.
In 2016, Montgomery v. Louisiana found that the ruling in Miller applies retroactively, thus granting numerous incarcerated individuals automatically sentenced to JLWOP before Miller the opportunity to be resentenced. According to Professor Markham, of the 94 defendants under 18 convicted of first-degree murder and charged with LWOP, 51 have already had resentencing hearings in accordance with Montgomery and Miller. Of those, 32 were automatically resentenced to life with the possibility of parole after 25 years because they were sentenced to LWOP under the felony murder rule, which as of 2013 no longer carries the possibility of LWOP. The remaining 17 individuals who have had Miller hearings were not found guilty solely of felony murder and were thus eligible to be resentenced to LWOP if the judge saw fit. The reason the numbers do not add up to 51 is due to revised pleas or other motions that allowed some defendants to receive different sentences. Of the 17 individuals who could have been sentenced to LWOP once again during their Miller hearing, 6 were indeed resentenced to the same punishment.
Just last year in Jones v. Mississippi, the U.S. Supreme Court found that a specific finding of “permanent incorrigibility” is not required during sentencing in order for a judge to sentence an individual to LWOP during their Miller hearing. This means that judges do not have to explicitly find that a juvenile is irredeemable in order to sentence them to life in prison. This demonstrates a regression in the previously steady march of expansion in juvenile protections under federal law.
However, there is a case currently pending review before the North Carolina Supreme Court that could effectively ban JLWOP in the state. In State v. Williams, a North Carolina Court of Appeals panel reversed a trial court’s decision to sentence a defendant to JLWOP in 2011. Echoing the decision in Montgomery, the three-judge panel found that a sentence of JLWOP must be “reserved for those juvenile defendants who exhibit such irretrievable depravity that rehabilitation is impossible.” Essentially, the Court of Appeals found that judges must find permanent incorrigibility before sentencing a juvenile to life without parole, the opposite of the U.S. Supreme Court’s finding in Jones.
It is possible that the North Carolina Supreme Court will agree with the three-judge panel in this case. As Professor Markham said, “our State [Supreme] Court could decide that a finding of permanent incorrigibility is required to give a sentence of life without parole” to a juvenile. Essentially, the North Carolina legal system is empowered to be “more protective of a person’s rights, just not less protective” when compared to that of the federal government. However, he also notes the high likelihood that the state Supreme Court will simply agree with the decision in Jones.
As previously stated, the reason State v. Williams is so important is that the decision could effectively ban the JLWOP sentence in North Carolina. Professor Markham explains that because finding a juvenile defendant to be permanently incorrigible in light of research into adolescent brain development is nearly impossible, forcing judges to make that determination could stop them from handing down a JLWOP sentence altogether. Thus State v. Williams can be viewed as a case to decide the future of the juvenile life without parole sentence in North Carolina.
It is difficult to say whether or not North Carolina will effectively become the 26th state to ban JLWOP in the only country on Earth which allows for the sentence. Professor Markham says that it may simply come down to the composition of the state Supreme Court at the time when State v. Williams is heard. No matter the case, JLWOP sentences have declined drastically in North Carolina. Since 2011, only five JLWOP sentences have been handed down across the entire state. These sentences are also concentrated in small pockets: 61% of all NC JLWOP sentences have been entered in only 11 counties. Perhaps State v. Williams will simply serve as the final nail in the coffin for the harshest punishment juveniles can currently receive in North Carolina.