remodel please not only the clerk of the court is permitted to record these proceedings today ok mr o'connor are you ready to proceed i can hear you oh yes your honor ok thank you you may proceed thank you may please the court counsel my name is christine o'conner i am an assistant appellate defender at the office the state appellate defender and i represent mr robert cole in this matter this case involves the denial of leave to file successive post conviction petition and as petition robert asserted that the sentence he received for an offense he committed when he was eighteen years old violates the element proportionate penalties costs because he was more mentally similar to an adolescent and a fully mature adult who is still moving towards mature asian robert also cited to various cases that support his claim and robert has followed what our supreme court has required similarly situated youthful individuals to do therefore th currently courts are split on how to handle that finding of prejudice in this case and we don't have any specific guidance from the allen i supreme court on what is required to prove prejudice here furthermore as noted in the case people hearses daniels there is no guidance on exactly what an individual who falls under a potential emerging adult claim is required to be successful and the case people versus harris does not suggest that a defendant's participation in a crime or discretionary sentence should utterly disqualify him from raising such a claim in this case really if you believe harris allows the raising of a proportion of penalties issue in a success of post conviction defendant can be successful and his type of claim it is just highlighting that was it's to the specific circumstances and facts of the case ok thank you your what end robert's post conviction petition he detailed the case law and shows that his claim is cognizable and robert stated that he was more mentally similar to an adolescent than a fully mature adult who is still moving towards mensuration this is supported by the record in this confessed a day after the events took place he admitted his guilt he pled guilty to every single count that he was charged with and the only agreement was to a sentencing cap of six years and no one is arguing but this the offense and all the attendant circumstances at robert sentencing hearing counsel provided no evidence of mitigation the only argument that counsel made was that robert was eighteen years old he had pled guilty and even the minimum sentence would be a long time robert stated that he was very sorry for what he had done he was wrong and he wanted to apologize to everybody who was affected by his actions the trial court found no factors in mitigation of  did not state robert's age or consider his youth or attending circumstances and it stated that it found no reason to impose anything other than the maximum cap that was allowed which was six years the p s i i included information about robert as a teenager that he had fronted to impress peers he suffered from in your management issues he had issues with both drugs and alcohol and with treatment those symptoms could and did continue to improve i had no alcohol problems robert stated that he used to drink and then at the age of seventeen he was drinking every single day however at the time of year found that he was not drinking at that time but he did drink every single day while he was seventeen and there's really no evidence in the record to hook show how that affected robert as he was growing up and he had no mental health problems that  according to records he did not however i'm robert was on meth and but i mean at the time and had a very lengthy history of drug abuse so this court recently decided the case of people hearses what however that case is distinguishable from this case that are important to me at the very beginning of that case this court noted that it was on appeal and at this court for the th time there are multiple peels which attacked the sentence and has the defendant's conviction the defendant was twenty years old he did not show remorse for his crimes and he attempted to avoid accountability this court found that defendant was not a teenager on the cusp between a juvenile and adults but it was undisputed about any cognitive or developmental impairments and that is different from what is the current in this case robert was eighteen years old there is a difference between an eighteen year old and a twenty year old robert was a teenager on the cusp between a juvenile and adult additional he this is the st appeal that robert has taken to this court the court is hearing on the merits and robert plant almost twenty years ago robert did show remorse for his crimes and he admitted to what he did a day later robert never attempted to avoid countability in this case so in addition to the drug and alcohol abuse while the record is not fully developed it is not undisputed about any was had earlier that fronting to impress his peers and that is something that is a teenage quality and actually supports his claim that he falls under this category so he was over falls under whatever court has recognized that simple youthful individuals can attempt to prove and at this stage robert is not asking this court to find that his sentence is a violation of their proportionate and auntie's clause he is asking this court to find that he is st enough to be able to move on to nd stage proceedings where he can have counsel be appointed to represent him to further develop his claim and accordance with the walk and act in order to eighteen years old he was the principal and he received a lesser sentence than robert if you're c forty years the reviewing court found the defendant was prohibited from raising this claim earlier and that he should be given a chance to further his post conviction proceedings he made it well say it is legal argument and he actually the defendant in her we've stated something very similar to robert that he fell under this type of area of emerging adult claims and the court noted that at proceed to a developed record robert again is not asking this what prevents every eighteen year old from just coming in and asking to pilot six a supposed nixon claim and just alleging and a half has multiple appeals if you talk to sentence humorous times and then edition to arguing that his case should just be remanded for a new sentencing hearing the court under you discuss the record sentencing hearing the it please court counsel my name is sharon chan hand i'm still sitting opposing counsel and i would like to start out with exactly the point your honor that you raised us this case which is what is to prevent every eighteen a half ninety nine when they have twenty year old coming in and saying look case law has changed i've proved prejudice that's not what this court said and why it's not what many other cases of said and it should not be the holding of this court today in the people versus smith and almost supreme court case this court has said that it is clear that the legislature and prejudice test for successive petitions requires the defendant to submit enough in the way of documentation to allow a circuit court to make that determination and  goes on to say we conclude that leave of court to file successive post conviction petition should be denied when it is clear from a review of the success of petition and the documentation presented by the petition that the claims fail as a matter of law or where the success of titian was with supporting documentation is insufficient to justify further proceedings and that's pretty much what this court  held in and white they said you can't just make just as well this was a case that you decided and you said you can't just make a vague claim you have to present youthful indiscretions i guess i'll call it so that's what this court decided and and i think that's that's where we are again and people originally is not the kind of documentation that could satisfy the chest i think it could be part of it yes your honor and i would go on to say that if you review the p s i i in this case as well as the the facts that were presented as the plea and the facts that were presented at the sentencing hearing then you see that even if i mean basically what defendant wants lawyers to help him put in those facts that he's left out of his petition my st argument is you're not that's not the way the case law has been interpreted specifically in this court and in many other case you have to present it with you but the nd thing is even if somehow you say ok you win what is the ultimate relief well you get miller complian sensing sentencing hearing well he had a miller compliant thing hearing if you look at that p s i if you look at the at the factual basis for the plea if you look at the testimony at the sentencing hearing you i was one of the very st states in the united states to thoroughly consider use i mean it goes back decades and that's why twenty years ago this defense attorney was repeatedly arguing about his youth he went on to say that  so we and of course it's well developed law that if you argue something to a judge at sentencing that it's assumed that he did consider so the defense used was considered he repeatedly argued that he was a young man and caught in d an unfortunate circumstance the record the reveals that that the defendant lived with his mother and his stepfather he got along fine with him no problems it reveals that he was a good student that he had completed th grade that he wanted to go to the army it does i disagree with counsel's interpretation of alcohol i think it is v goes back six years it's two to six years before the commission of the this murder i think if anything it proves that the senate is in corrigible because despite the fact that he got eerily similar to this breaking into a house and stealing guns this time he broke into a house his grandfather's have and he's great grandfather was not a threat to him this is what appalls me the most personally in this case is that his grandfather was sound asleep wasn't like he was a threat to the theft of these guns and he walked right up to it and put the shotgun to the back of his head and pulled the trigger he was laughing defendant's statements like that number one mean anything and number two was are they further support the fact that the van that has had not mature than was not going to mature and wasn't corrigible or whether they support a juvenile characteristics the alcohol that the senate did say he drank when he was younger which by the way seventeen year and a half before this crime so but it was bud light and tequila and i betcha there aren't very many seventeen year olds out there that haven't had a bad life so he by his own  admission said he had not consumed alcoholic beverages for quite some time and he didn't feel he had all alcohol problems i think it's really important that he was the principal actor in this crime  one of the cases that always comes up is house and houses again the for the supreme court we'll see what happens there but in house the defendant just was the lookout in this case a defendant was the principal actor he went in he stole the guns broke into the house he stole the guns he shot his grandfather he was the principal actor he had no diagnosis of any mental health disorder and i mean this if you look at all of that that's that's a miller compliance sentencing hearing so he's gotten everything that he could possibly want even were this court to decide that miller applies to those over the age of eighteen ok thank you michelle and him for your argument discuss robert's youth he stated that he was eighteen years old the trial for in response there were no factors in mitigation that applied he did not know robert's age or any of the useful characteristics of robert and the court that there was no reason to not impose sentence and the maximum allowed by the care and again there is no guidance on what is required to prove prejudice in this  matter of law or the petition is insufficient to justify further proceedings there are other cases where it was a very similar post conviction petitions such as robert filed and the court found that because of what occurred in that case that that defendant should be allowed to go to further proceedings again robert is not asking this court to hold that his sentence is a violation of the proportionate penalty clause robert there is no indication that robert is a lawyer in this case the reason we have nd stage proceedings is to have an attorney appointed to help properly shape those claims into legal arguments and yes robert did state enough here he was not allowed to bring this claim in two thousand and one at that time even juveniles were not necessarily treated any differently they could receive us of a life sentence without the possibility of parole robert recognizes he was eighteen years old he was a teenager on the cusp between being a juvenile and an adult furthermore it is important to note that robert lost his st post conviction petition through no fault of his own he filed a petition for relief from judgment the trial court improperly re characterize that petition into a post conviction  our supreme court's case people vs shell strum which discussed how the trial court must give admonishments and allow the defendant to withdraw the petition if you chooses and it is to show what could possibly be that we could lose that case was decided a year later after robert voluntarily dismissed his appeal and it is not retroactive so this is not a case where this court has heard numerous appeals robert has never stated that he is not responsible for his actions robert is just asking this court to be able to have the opportunity to present evidence to show that he falls under this claim as an eighteen year old who has to there's evidence that he struggled with a lot of issues  fronting drug and alcohol abuse yes maule robert stated he did not believe he had an alcohol issue at the time the fact that he did drink every single day the age of seventeen could have affected him and the record is not fully developed here already is asking is for a chance to further develop their record so he can support his claim that his sentence violence to all my proportion and penalties clause in light of this recent research on brain development that robert was not allowed to not able to bring sooner he did exactly what our supreme court procedurally has asked of him and he has met the burden of showing cause and prejudice in this case furthermore fairness and justice should allow robert to proceed on his claim here therefore robert respectfully ask this court to reverse the your argument mr connor yes your honor thank you all right thank you both for your argument this letter will be taken under advisement and we will issue a just position in due course have a great day ladies