Opinion ID: 4556393
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Delgado’s Sentencing

Text: Delgado, who was seventeen at the time of the MacDonald and Young murders, argues that the district court violated the Eighth Amendment by failing to give the requisite weight to his youth before sentencing him to life imprisonment. In 2012, the Supreme Court held that mandatory life-withoutparole sentences for juvenile offenders categorically violated the Eighth 28 Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. Miller v. Alabama, 567 U.S. 460, 465 (2012). Miller advanced the principle that “children are constitutionally different from adults for purposes of sentencing.” Id. at 471. But contrary to the government’s argument on appeal, Miller is not limited to mandatory sentencing schemes. Although Miller focused on state statutory schemes that prescribed mandatory life sentences for juveniles, it recognized that “about 15% of all juvenile life-without-parole sentences [then being served]” were nonmandatory sentences imposed at the discretion of a judge or jury. Id. at 483 n.10. Rather than include those sentences in the broader categorical ban, the Court concluded only “that a judge or jury must have the opportunity to consider mitigating circumstances before imposing the harshest possible penalty for juveniles.” Id. at 489. 5 5 Miller listed some of the “hallmark features” of juvenile defendants, including: (1) a lack of maturity that leads to, among other things, “heedless risk-taking;” (2) a lack of “ability to extricate from horrific-crime producing settings;” (3) an incompetence of youth in dealing with law enforcement; and (4) a juvenile’s potential for rehabilitation. Id. at 477–78. These “distinctive attributes of youth diminish the penological justification for imposing the harshest sentences on juvenile offenders, even when they commit terrible crimes.” Id. at 472. 29 In 2016, after Delgado’s sentencing, the Supreme Court issued Montgomery v. Louisiana, 136 S. Ct. 718 (2016), which provided additional guidance about the proper application of Miller. Montgomery explains that Miller has both substantive and procedural components. As a matter of substantive constitutional law, Montgomery describes the pre-Miller world as a place where “every juvenile convicted of a homicide offense could be sentenced to life without parole.” Id. at 734. But, after Miller, the Court noted that “it will be the rare juvenile offender who can receive that same sentence.” Id. Montgomery stresses that a life-without-parole sentence is permissible only for “the rarest of juvenile offenders”—specifically, “those whose crimes reflect permanent incorrigibility” and “irreparable corruption.” Id. Montgomery also discusses Miller’s “procedural component”—in that Miller requires the trial court “to consider a juvenile offender's youth and attendant characteristics before determining that life without parole is a proportionate sentence.” Id. A sentencing court’s consideration of these factors, according to Montgomery, “gives effect to Miller’s substantive holding that life without parole is an excessive sentence for children whose crimes reflect transient immaturity.” Id. at 735. 30 Since there is no parole in the federal system, Delgado’s sentence is effectively the same as a life-without-parole sentence in state court systems. See Romano v. Luther, 816 F.2d 832, 837 (2d Cir. 1987) (noting that the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 eliminated parole). And, under Supreme Court precedent, Delgado could be sentenced to life-without-parole as a juvenile only based on his participation in the MacDonald and Young murders under the RICO conspiracy count, and not on the narcotics conspiracy count alone. See Graham v. Florida, 560 U.S. 48, 75 (2010) (holding that life-without-parole sentences for juveniles convicted of nonhomicide offenses are unconstitutional). While Delgado’s sentence was not mandatory 6 and thus does not fall under the categorical ban of Miller, his sentence was nonetheless improper. The district court did not reference Delgado’s age at all, much less grapple with it. Even though the district court noted that it considered all of the Section 3553(a) 6 Unlike the other codefendants, Delgado was not charged with the murders pursuant to the Violent Crimes in Aid of Racketeering (“VCAR”) statute. VCAR prohibits the commission of certain violent crimes “in violation of the laws of any State or the United States,” including murder, “for the purpose of gaining entrance to or maintaining or increasing position in an enterprise engaged in racketeering activity.” 18 U.S.C. § 1959(a). VCAR-murder carries a mandatory life sentence. 18 U.S.C. § 1959(a)(1). 31 factors, which includes age in one of its policy statements, see U.S.S.G. § 5H1.1, a mere passing reference to Section 3553(a) is not enough to satisfy Miller’s constitutional mandate that reaches beyond what is set out in the Sentencing Guidelines. Delgado’s sentencing hearing does not indicate that there was deliberate consideration of his character as a juvenile, a constitutionally distinct class of defendants. Miller requires the district court to undertake additional reflection on the special social, psychological, and biological factors attributable to youth, and such reflection is absent from Delgado’s sentencing hearing transcript. To be sure, we have no doubt that Judge Arcara knew the ages of the defendants when he sentenced them, along with much else that commands the attention of a sentencing judge. The sentencing transcript here is thorough and thoughtful; but Miller requires a more specific consideration in this case; and on resentencing, the court will have an opportunity to consider subsequent events, which may or may not counsel a lesser sentence, but that may be of considerable impact given the five years intervening since the original sentencing. Accordingly, we vacate and remand for resentencing. On remand, the district court must consider the mitigating factors of youth as required by Miller 32 before it can determine that the most severe sentence for juvenile defendants— life imprisonment without the possibility of parole—is a proportionate sentence.