Bill would ban life sentences for juveniles in Arizona

In December 2016, the Arizona State Supreme Court, following a national trend, questioned whether people who commit murder before age 18 should be sentenced to life without parole.

The high court sent two such natural life sentences back to Pima County Superior Court for re-sentencing, and the defendants were sent back to prison with a chance of parole after 25 years.

The Arizona justices noted in their opinion on the two cases that they could not automatically change all such sentences, but that the Legislature could change the laws to accommodate inmates sentenced to natural life as teenage murderers.

Last week, a Republican in the Arizona House of Representatives took them up on the suggestion.

Rep. Heather Carter, R-Scottsdale, introduced a fix to the sentencing statutes that would make those juvenile offenders eligible for a parole hearing after 25 years. House Bill 2193 will be considered, along with a separate Senate bill that will create parole eligibility for certain adults convicted of first-degree murder who had entered into plea agreements that expressly stipulated parole options.

Carter did not respond to a request for comment, but she issued a statement saying, “Arizona’s criminal justice system has long recognized the fundamental difference between children and adult offenders. It’s time for Arizona to provide a clear statement of our values regarding the treatment of children placed in custody for serious offenses.”

According to Arizona Attorneys for Criminal Justice, an association of defense attorneys, Arizona would become the 21st state to ban natural life sentences for juvenile offenders.

"We're very pleased by this recommendation," said Amy Kalman, AACJ president. "It's a recognition that people can be channeled back into society."

Sentences for juveniles under scrutiny

Parole was abolished in Arizona in 1993 as part of tough-on-crime legislation called "Truth in Sentencing."

For those convicted of first-degree murder, the sentence of life with a chance of parole after 25 or 35 years was replaced with the more vague sentence of life with chance of release after 25 or 35 years.

Parole could be granted by an independent parole board, but release required a pardon from the governor. Eventually, even that sentence was removed from the statutes for those who committed premeditated murder. The choice was natural life — which means no chance of release or parole — or death.

But over the past two decades, state and federal court decisions have made states reconsider how they treat juvenile offenders. And Truth in Sentencing laws have come under attack, as well, over how they apply to adults.

In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court banned executions of murderers who committed their crimes as juveniles, arguing that the juvenile brain is not yet mature.

Then, in 2012, the high court outlawed mandatory natural life sentences for juveniles. When juvenile natural life sentences in Arizona were challenged, the state came back with the argument that such sentences were not mandatory, that they were weighed against the lesser sentence of life with chance of release after 25 years.

But the federal courts countered, saying that was not good enough and that juvenile sentences required parole eligibility. Arizona appellate courts already had stated that the concept of "release" was "illusory." Life with release, in other words, pretty much amounted to life with no chance of parole because there really was no mechanism to be released.

As a result, in 2014, the Arizona Legislature reinstated parole for those inmates who received 25-to-life sentences for murders they committed as juveniles. Then, in December 2016, the Arizona Supreme Court overturned the two natural life sentences that led to the current legislative bill.

A sentence that doesn't exist

An Arizona Republic investigation in March 2017 reported that even though parole had been abolished in 1993, Arizona judges had continued to sentence adults and juveniles to life with possibility of parole sentences. Going through sentencing records, The Republic found more than 250 instances in which judges had offered sentences with parole eligibility — more than 50 percent of all 25-to-life sentences.

INVESTIGATION: The myth of parole in Arizona

What would happen to those sentenced to a sentence that didn't exist?

The question was resolved for the juvenile offenders with the 2014 law change. What of the hundreds of adults who received the same erroneous sentence after their first-degree murder convictions?

The Arizona Supreme Court asked for a study of those sentences with parole that were the result of plea agreements. The Pima County Attorney's Office, working with the Arizona Prosecuting Attorney's Advisory Council, proposed legislation offering parole eligibility to all adult inmates serving 25-to-life sentences, much as the Legislature had already done for juveniles.

When Senate Bill 1211 was introduced this session by Republican Sens. Judy Burges, Kate Brophy McGee and Lupe Contreras, it had been pared back to granting parole eligibility only to those who had entered into plea agreements with prosecutors that expressly stipulated parole options.

A plea deal is a signed contract, after all.

"It was decided that the other cases each had its own unique record and should be handled via post-conviction relief," said Kathleen Mayer, legislative liaison for the Pima County Attorney's Office.

In other words, all other cases will have to be hammered out in court one by one, based on whether there are remaining transcripts of the sentencing hearings to ascertain what the judge did or didn't say — and whether defense attorneys are willing to take up the cases in the first place.

The prevailing legal interpretation is that what the judge said during the sentencing hearing is the official finding, not the memorandum, or "minute entry," signed by the judge to memorialize the sentence. In discussions with prosecutors and judges, The Arizona Republic was told that the majority of cases would likely be clerical errors.

But there are more than 200 such cases; they could clog the courts.

And the first of the petitions for post-conviction relief was filed Friday in Maricopa County Superior Court by attorneys at the Post-Conviction Clinic at Arizona State University's Sandra Day O'Connor School of Law and the Arizona Justice Project, which was instrumental in reinstating parole for juveniles.

The petition appeals the case of Abelardo Chaparro, who shot a former friend to death at a convenience store in Phoenix in 1995.

Chaparro claimed self-defense, but he was found guilty of first-degree murder at trial and was sentenced to life with a chance of parole after 25 years. When he inquired about his parole eligibility, he was informed by the Arizona Department of Corrections that there was none.

In his petition, his attorneys wrote that the court and ADC "do not have the power to change the sentence that Mr. Chaparro received in 1996." Nor can a court retroactively impose a harsher sentence than the one imposed at the time of sentencing, they argue.

The transcripts will bear out that the sentencing judge meant to offer parole eligibility, they say.

The case outcome likely will influence how the rest of the erroneous life-with-parole sentences are resolved and whether the state Legislature steps in again to fix two decades of judicial errors.

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