State v. Samuel Ryan (085165) (Cumberland County & Statewide) ( 2022 )

SYLLABUS
This syllabus is not part of the Court’s opinion. It has been prepared by the Office of the
Clerk for the convenience of the reader. It has been neither reviewed nor approved by the
Court. In the interest of brevity, portions of an opinion may not have been summarized.
State v. Samuel Ryan (A-65-20) (085165)
Argued November 29, 2021 -- Decided February 7, 2022
SOLOMON, J., writing for the Court.
In this appeal, the Court considers whether crimes committed by a defendant while
under the age of eighteen may count as predicate offenses under the “Three Strikes Law,”
which mandates a sentence of life imprisonment without parole for a third-time offender.
At the age of sixteen, defendant committed two armed robberies within two days;
he was convicted of two counts of first-degree robbery in 1990. In February 1996, less
than three years after his release from prison, defendant committed two more armed
robberies. Defendant was indicted separately for, and convicted of, each of the two 1996
robberies. Upon defendant’s conviction for the second 1996 robbery, the State moved to
sentence him to an extended term pursuant to the Three Strikes Law, predicated upon
(1) his 1990 conviction, (2) his conviction for the first 1996 robbery, and (3) his
conviction for the second 1996 robbery. The court sentenced defendant accordingly.
Defendant unsuccessfully appealed his convictions and sentence and thereafter
filed eleven post-conviction release (PCR) petitions between 1999 and 2012. In 2018,
defendant filed his twelfth PCR petition -- a motion to correct an illegal sentence
-- relying on the United States Supreme Court’s holding in Miller v. Alabama, 567 U.S.
460 (2012), that mandatory life-without-parole sentences for juvenile offenders are
unconstitutional, and the Court’s holding in State v. Zuber, 227 N.J. 422 (2017), that
juveniles cannot be sentenced to the functional equivalent of life without parole.
Defendant contended that his sentence was unconstitutional because his first strike
occurred when he was a juvenile and the sentencing court did not consider the Miller
factors before imposing a mandatory life sentence under the Three Strikes Law.
The trial court denied defendant’s motion, and the Appellate Division affirmed.
The Court granted certification. 246 N.J. 316 (2021).
HELD: The Three Strikes Law and the mandatory life-without-parole sentence imposed
upon defendant under that statute do not violate the constitutional prohibition on cruel
and unusual punishment. Further, Miller and Zuber have no application to adult
defendants sentenced under the Three Strikes Law.
1
1. When challenging the constitutionality of a sentencing statute, a defendant must
overcome the strong presumption of constitutionality that attaches to any legislative
enactment. Where reasonable minds may differ regarding the constitutionality of a
statute, courts defer to the will of the Legislature. (pp. 11-12)
2. Determining whether punishment is cruel and unusual under the Eighth Amendment
of the United States Constitution and Article I, Paragraph 12 of the New Jersey
Constitution requires the following three-part inquiry: First, does the punishment for the
crime conform with contemporary standards of decency? Second, is the punishment
grossly disproportionate to the offense? Third, does the punishment go beyond what is
necessary to accomplish any legitimate penological objective? (pp. 12-13)
3. Aimed at protecting the public from offenders who repeatedly commit serious
offenses, the Three Strikes Law imposes a mandatory sentence of life without parole
upon any person convicted on three separate occasions of certain violent crimes,
including murder, manslaughter, aggravated assault, kidnapping, sexual assault, and
robbery. N.J.S.A. 2C:43-7.1(a). The Court upheld the constitutionality of the Three
Strikes Law in State v. Oliver, when -- in addition to rejecting challenges advanced under
other constitutional provisions -- it made clear that the Three Strikes Law does not
constitute cruel and unusual punishment. 162 N.J. 580, 585-89 (2000). (pp. 13-15)
4. In Miller, the United States Supreme Court held that mandatory life-without-parole
sentences constitute cruel and unusual punishment when imposed on juvenile offenders
but did not foreclose juveniles from being sentenced to life without parole. 567 U.S. at
465, 480. Instead, the Court instructed sentencing courts to take into consideration the
“hallmark features” of youth, the nature of the juvenile’s environment, the effect of
youthful “incompetencies” on the prosecution’s outcome, and the “possibility of
rehabilitation.” See id. at 477-78. In Zuber, the Court extended application of the Miller
factors to situations where a juvenile is facing a term of imprisonment that is the practical
equivalent to life without parole. 227 N.J. at 429-30. (pp. 16-17)
5. Applying the three-part test here, the Court notes first that the Three Strikes Law
continues to conform to contemporary standards of decency: federal courts have
overwhelmingly held that the Eighth Amendment does not prohibit counting juvenile
offenses as strikes, and most states with three-strikes legislation count juvenile-age
convictions as strikes where the defendant was waived up to adult court. Second, an
enhanced life-without-parole sentence is not grossly disproportionate where the offense is
a dangerous and violent first-degree crime. Most importantly, the punishment serves the
legitimate penological objective of incapacitating serious third-time offenders. The
Three Strikes Law “was a response to a genuine legislative concern that repeat offenders
pose a unique danger to society.” Oliver, 162 N.J. at 589. (pp. 17-20)
2
6. The fact that the Legislature limited the definition of recidivists under the persistent
offender statute, N.J.S.A. 2C:44-3(a), to defendants over the age of twenty-one who
committed their three qualifying crimes after turning eighteen reinforces, rather than
undermines, the Court’s conclusion. N.J.S.A. 2C:44-3(a) illustrates plainly that the
Legislature knows how to establish minimum ages for predicate offenses. It chose to do
so in the persistent offender statute but did not include similar limits when it enacted the
Three Strikes Law. It is the Legislature’s prerogative to impose a requirement in one
context but not another; courts must treat that distinction as meaningful. (pp. 21-23)
7. Nor do the holdings in Miller and Zuber change the outcome of the Court’s
constitutional analysis. Those cases are uniquely concerned with the sentencing of
juvenile offenders to lifetime imprisonment or its functional equivalent without the
possibility of parole. There is nothing in Miller or Zuber that precludes application of a
recidivist statute such as the Three Strikes Law to an adult defendant. Indeed, as made
clear in Oliver, the enhanced sentence under the Three Strikes Law is not imposed “‘as
either a new jeopardy or additional penalty for earlier crimes,’ but instead as a ‘stiffened
penalty for the latest crime.’” 162 N.J. at 586. (pp. 23-24)
AFFIRMED.
JUSTICE ALBIN, dissenting, expresses the view that the use of Ryan’s juvenile
conviction as a predicate offense for the purpose of imposing a mandatory life sentence
under the Three Strikes Law violates the cruel and unusual punishment provisions of the
Federal and State Constitutions. Justice Albin states that the majority’s decision in this
case cannot be squared with the consolidated opinion in State v. Comer and State v.
Zarate, in which the Court stressed that because “children are different from adults,” the
lengthy mandatory sentences imposed against Comer and Zarate for their juvenile murder
convictions were cruel and unusual under the State Constitution. State v. Comer, ___
N.J. ___, ___ (2022) (slip op. at 4-6, 51). Justice Albin notes that, whereas Comer and
Zarate are now eligible for release after serving twenty years, Ryan -- sentenced to a life
term at age twenty-three -- must serve forty-seven years before he will be eligible for
release, based on his juvenile conviction. In Justice Albin’s view, giving Ryan’s juvenile
conviction the same constitutional weight as his adult convictions is at odds with the
evolving standards of decency addressed in federal and state constitutional caselaw.
CHIEF JUSTICE RABNER and JUSTICES PATTERSON and FERNANDEZ-
VINA join in JUSTICE SOLOMON’s opinion. JUSTICE ALBIN filed a dissent, in
which JUSTICE PIERRE-LOUIS joins.
3
SUPREME COURT OF NEW JERSEY
A-65 September Term 2020
085165
State of New Jersey,
Plaintiff-Respondent,
v.
Samuel Ryan,
Defendant-Appellant.
On certification to the Superior Court,
Appellate Division.
Argued Decided
November 29, 2021 February 7, 2022
James K. Smith, Jr., Assistant Deputy Public Defender,
argued the cause for appellant (Joseph E. Krakora, Public
Defender, attorney; James K. Smith, Jr., of counsel and
on the briefs).
Daniel A. Finkelstein, Deputy Attorney General, argued
the cause for respondent (Andrew J. Bruck, Acting
Attorney General, attorney; Daniel A. Finkelstein, of
counsel and on the briefs).
Elana Wilf argued the cause for amici curiae the Rutgers
Criminal and Youth Justice Clinic and American Civil
Liberties Union of New Jersey (Rutgers University
School of Law – Newark Criminal and Youth Justice
Clinic and American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey
Foundation, attorneys; Elana Wilf, Laura Cohen,
Alexander Shalom, and Jeanne LoCicero, of the brief).
1
Dillon J. McGuire argued the cause for amicus curiae
Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers of New Jersey
(Pashman Stein Walder Hayden, attorneys; Dillon J.
McGuire, of counsel and on the brief, and CJ Griffin, on
the brief).
JUSTICE SOLOMON delivered the opinion of the Court.
In the winter of 1996, at the age of twenty-three, defendant Samuel Ryan
robbed a Bridgeton, New Jersey gas station at gunpoint, stealing $100 and
shooting a store clerk in the process. The offense resulted in defendant’s third
first-degree robbery conviction, and he was sentenced to life in prison without
parole pursuant to the Persistent Offender Accountability Act, N.J.S.A. 2C:43-
7.1(a), known as the “Three Strikes Law.”
A “legislative reaction to . . . shocking murders by paroled offenders,”
the Three Strikes Law mandates a sentence of life imprisonment without
parole for a third-time offender who had been convicted of certain serious and
violent offenses on two prior occasions. State v. Oliver, 162 N.J. 580, 583
(2000). Defendant’s three strikes included two first-degree armed robberies
committed as a sixteen-year-old juvenile; he was waived to Superior Court 1
1
Defendant was waived to Superior Court pursuant to N.J.S.A. 2A:4A-26
(2014), which was repealed effective March 1, 2016, by L. 2015, c. 89, § 6.
The replacement waiver statute, which remains current, raised the age of
eligibility for waiver to fifteen years old, among other changes. See N.J.S.A.
2A:4A-26.1.
2
and prosecuted jointly for both crimes -- the first strike. After his release from
prison, at the age of twenty-three, defendant committed two first-degree armed
robberies -- the second and third strikes. 2
In this appeal, defendant contends that the Three Strikes Law violates
the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment contained in the Eighth
Amendment of the United States Constitution and Article I, Paragraph 12 of
the New Jersey Constitution. He alleges that, by allowing courts to count
crimes committed while under the age of eighteen as predicate offenses in
sentencing defendants to mandatory life without parole, the Three Strikes Law
ignores the constitutional constraints embodied in Miller v. Alabama, 567 U.S.
460 (2012), and State v. Zuber, 227 N.J. 422 (2017), which prohibit imposition
of mandatory life-without-parole sentences or their functional equivalent on
juvenile offenders.
Because defendant committed his third offense and received an enhanced
sentence of life without parole as an adult, we hold that this appeal does not
implicate Miller or Zuber. Accordingly, we affirm defendant’s sentence and
reaffirm the constitutionality of the Three Strikes Law.
2
Because defendant’s earlier armed robbery convictions count as a single
strike, we refer to these offenses committed as an adult as defendant’s second
and third offenses or strikes for purposes of the Three Strikes Law.
3
I.
A.
We derive the following facts from the record of the court that sentenced
defendant for his third strike.
At the age of sixteen, defendant committed two armed robberies within
two days in November 1989. First, defendant and an accomplice robbed a gas
station with a nine-millimeter semi-automatic pistol. Two days later,
defendant and his accomplice committed another robbery at an apartment
complex in Bridgeton, New Jersey with a .22-caliber rifle. Defendant was
waived to Superior Court and prosecuted as an adult for both crimes
concurrently; defendant pled guilty to two counts of first-degree robbery,
N.J.S.A. 2C:15-1(a). The court found that defendant committed a first-degree
Graves Act3 offense and sentenced him to ten years’ imprisonment with three
and a third years of parole ineligibility.
Defendant was released on parole in May 1993. In February 1996, at the
age of twenty-three, less than three years after his release from prison,
defendant committed two more armed robberies. First, he and a co-defendant
3
The Graves Act imposes mandatory prison sentences on defendants who
commit crimes, such as robbery, while carrying a firearm, and requires
extended mandatory terms for defendants who have committed more than one
such offense. N.J.S.A. 2C:43-6(c).
4
stole cigarettes, food stamps, and $243 from a Wawa in Vineland, assaulting
two employees in the process. Three weeks later, defendant, acting alone,
committed another armed robbery at a Bridgeton gas station, where he stole
$100 and shot a store clerk in the neck, fracturing his jaw. Defendant was
indicted separately for each robbery.
Following trial on the Wawa robbery, a jury convicted defendant of first-
degree robbery, N.J.S.A. 2C:15-1(a), among other charges. The trial court
sentenced defendant to a sixty-year extended term under the Graves Act with
twenty years of parole ineligibility.
Five months later, a jury convicted defendant of the gas station robbery.
The State moved to sentence defendant to an extended term pursuant to the
Three Strikes Law, predicated upon his 1990 conviction of two counts of first-
degree robbery, his 1997 conviction of first-degree robbery, and the current
conviction. Finding that defendant had committed three first-degree armed
robberies and first-degree attempted murder, the sentencing judge granted the
State’s application for an extended term sentence and imposed concurrent
mandatory life sentences without parole for the armed robbery and attempted
murder convictions.
Defendant appealed his convictions and sentence. Defendant’s
arguments included that the mandatory sentence of life without parole imposed
5
under the Three Strikes Law constituted cruel and unusual punishment. The
Appellate Division affirmed defendant’s convictions and life sentences without
parole, noting that it had already found the Three Strikes Law to be
constitutional.4 We denied defendant’s petition for certification.
Defendant thereafter filed eleven post-conviction relief (PCR) petitions
between 1999 and 2012. None were successful, and defendant remained
incarcerated.
B.
In 2018, defendant filed his twelfth PCR petition -- a motion to correct
an illegal sentence -- relying on the United States Supreme Court’s holding in
Miller v. Alabama, 567 U.S. 460, that mandatory life-without-parole sentences
for juvenile offenders are unconstitutional, and this Court’s holding in State v.
Zuber, 227 N.J. 422, that juveniles cannot be sentenced to the functional
equivalent of life without parole. Defendant contended that his sentence was
unconstitutional because his first strike occurred when he was a juvenile and
the sentencing court did not consider the Miller factors5 before imposing a
mandatory life sentence under the Three Strikes Law.
4
This Court affirmed the statute’s constitutionality the following year in
Oliver, 162 N.J. 580.
5
Miller, 567 U.S. at 477-78.
6
The trial court denied defendant’s motion, finding that because
defendant received his enhanced life sentence as an adult, Miller and Zuber did
not apply. The court explained that defendant’s conviction while a juvenile
counted as a conviction in adult court for a first-degree Graves Act offense -- a
first strike. Miller and Zuber, the court further reasoned, are intended to offer
incarcerated juveniles a meaningful opportunity to re-enter society upon
rehabilitation, but defendant already had that opportunity and chose to return
to his violent behaviors as an adult. The court therefore held that defendant
properly received an enhanced sentence under the Three Strikes Law.
The Appellate Division affirmed, adopting the trial court’s reasoning
that defendant received his mandatory life sentence as an adult and that Miller
and Zuber were therefore inapposite. The court further noted that defendant
had his opportunity to re-enter society when he was released from prison in
1993, but instead continued to commit even more violent crimes.
This Court granted defendant’s petition for certification to consider
whether a defendant’s prior juvenile-age conviction counts as a predicate
offense under the Three Strikes Law. 246 N.J. 316 (2021). We then granted
leave to participate as amici curiae to the Association of Criminal Defense
Lawyers of New Jersey (ACDL) and to the Rutgers Criminal and Youth Justice
7
Clinic and the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey, participating
jointly (collectively, Rutgers Clinic).
II.
Defendant contends that allowing sentencing courts to count juvenile
offenses as strikes when imposing on defendants mandatory life-without-
parole sentences violates both the Eighth Amendment of the United States
Constitution, and Article I, Paragraph 12 of the New Jersey Constitution. He
argues that juvenile-age convictions are not the same as convictions for
offenses committed as an adult and therefore cannot be considered under the
Three Strikes Law because juveniles are less culpable and less deserving of
such severe punishment than adults. Defendant notes that, in sentencing him
to life without parole, the court did not apply the Miller factors to his first
strike or consider how young he was at the time of the offense. He argues that
the Three Strikes Law’s mandatory minimum sentence of life without parole
precludes judges from considering youth as a mitigating factor at sentencing
and denies the offender a meaningful opportunity to obtain release based upon
demonstrated maturity and rehabilitation.
Defendant also highlights that the Three Strikes Law contains no
language limiting its application to juvenile offenders and contends that
sentencing courts could conceivably impose mandatory life-without-parole
8
sentences even when all three offenses were committed while a juvenile.
Finally, defendant argues that because the “persistent offender” statute,
N.J.S.A. 2C:44-3(a), defines recidivists as defendants over the age of twenty-
one who committed three first-, second-, or third-degree qualifying crimes
after turning eighteen, the Legislature could not reasonably have intended to
include offenses committed as a juvenile under the Three Strikes Law.
Amici advance substantially the same constitutional arguments as
defendant. The ACDL also contends that notions of fundamental fairness
preclude counting prior juvenile convictions as predicate offenses under the
Three Strikes Law. The Rutgers Clinic extends defendant’s argument further,
asserting that this Court should not count any offenses committed before a
defendant reaches the age of twenty-six as strikes under the Three Strikes Law.
The State counters that defendant has not met his burden in proving the
Three Strikes Law unconstitutional and that his sentence should therefore be
affirmed. Noting that the Legislature enacted the statute as a response to
heinous crimes committed by recidivist offenders, the State asserts that, in
declining to differentiate between juvenile and adult offenses, the Legislature
intended that juvenile offenses be considered in the same way as adult offenses
under the Three Strikes Law. The State reasons that juvenile offenses are
considered at sentencing as evidence of a likelihood to reoffend, citing
9
N.J.S.A. 2C:44-1(a)(6) and case law. More importantly, the State emphasizes
that offenders like defendant, who commit violent crimes as adults despite
having served time in prison, are no longer juveniles when they are sentenced
under the Three Strikes Law, making Miller and Zuber inapplicable.
Accordingly, the State insists that life without parole is a constitutional
sentence considering defendant’s propensity to reoffend.
The State further notes that other courts, including eight United States
Courts of Appeals, have held that juvenile offenses can be considered under
recidivist statutes like the Three Strikes Law. The State refutes defendant’s
contention that the “persistent offender” statute is inconsistent with allowing
consideration of juvenile-age offenses under the Three Strikes Law, arguing
that the Legislature reasonably determined that the dangerous nature of first-
degree crimes covered by the Three Strikes Law requires that offenders who
committed a qualifying offense while a juvenile nevertheless should be
incapacitated for life.
III.
A.
Defendant’s PCR petition claims that his sentence imposed under the
Three Strikes Law is illegal. Ordinarily a defendant must file a PCR petition
within the time prescribed by Rule 3:22-12, but a defendant may challenge an
10
illegal sentence at any time as provided by Rule 3:21-10(b)(5). “An ‘illegal
sentence’ is one ‘not imposed in accordance with the law,’” including a
sentence that violates a constitutional safeguard. Zuber, 227 N.J. at 437
(quoting State v. Acevedo, 205 N.J. 40, 45 (2011)). We begin our discussion
here by reviewing the applicable standards of review when considering a
defendant’s motion to correct an illegal sentence.
When challenging the constitutionality of a sentencing statute, a
defendant must overcome “[t]he strong presumption of constitutionality that
attaches” to any legislative enactment. State v. Buckner, 223 N.J. 1, 14 (2015)
(alteration in original) (quoting Hamilton Amusement Ctr. v. Verniero, 156
N.J. 254, 285 (1998)). “The foundation for that presumption is solid and clear:
the challenged law ‘represents the considered action of a body composed of
popularly elected representatives’” and is entitled to judicial deference. Ibid.(quoting N.J. Sports & Exposition Auth. v. McCrane, 61 N.J. 1, 8 (1972)). To
overcome the strong presumption of validity, the defendant must demonstrate
that the statute’s “repugnancy to the constitution is clear beyond reasonable
doubt.” Ibid. (quoting Gangemi v. Berry, 25 N.J. 1, 10 (1957)). Where
reasonable minds may differ regarding the constitutionality of a statute, we
will defer to the will of the Legislature. Id. at 15. We must be mindful of such
deference while considering the Three Strikes Law in the context of the Eighth
11
Amendment of the United States Constitution and Article I, Paragraph 12 of
the New Jersey Constitution.
B.
The ban on excessive punishment “flows from the basic precept of
justice that punishment for crime should be graduated and proportioned to the
offense.” Zuber, 227 N.J. at 437 (internal quotation marks omitted) (quoting
Roper v. Simmons, 543 U.S. 551, 560 (2005)). The test to determine whether
punishment is cruel and unusual under the Eighth Amendment of the United
States Constitution and Article I, Paragraph 12 of the New Jersey Constitution
is “generally the same.” Id. at 438 (quoting State v. Ramseur, 106 N.J. 123,
169 (1987)). Both the Federal and State Constitutions require the following
three-part inquiry:
First, does the punishment for the crime conform with
contemporary standards of decency? Second, is the
punishment grossly disproportionate to the offense?
Third, does the punishment go beyond what is
necessary to accomplish any legitimate penological
objective?
[Ibid. (quoting Ramseur, 106 N.J. at 169).]
In assessing the first prong, courts look to the legislative enactments of
their own state and other states as the best markers of contemporary standards
of decency. See Roper, 543 U.S. at 564-68. For the second prong, courts
weigh “the culpability of the offenders at issue in light of their crimes and
12
characteristics, along with the severity of the punishment in question.”
Graham v. Florida, 560 U.S. 48, 67 (2010). Finally, for the third prong, courts
consider whether the punishment adequately fulfills the traditional penological
goals of retribution, deterrence, incapacitation, and rehabilitation. Id. at 72-74.
Application of this three-factor test to the present appeal governs whether New
Jersey’s Three Strikes Law is constitutional as applied to defendant and others
for whom one or more of the three requisite “strikes” relates to a juvenile
offense.
C.
Inspired by federal three-strikes legislation, our Legislature passed its
own three-strikes law in 1995. See Oliver, 162 N.J. at 583 (noting that the
Legislature passed the Persistent Offender Accountability Act, L. 1995, c. 126,
§ 2 (codified at N.J.S.A. 2C:43-7.1(a)), after the federal Violent Crime Control
and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, Pub. L. No. 103-322, 108 Stat. 1796(1994)). Aimed at protecting the public from offenders who repeatedly
commit serious offenses, the Three Strikes Law imposes a mandatory sentence
of life without parole upon any person convicted on three separate occasions of
certain violent crimes, including murder, manslaughter, aggravated assault,
kidnapping, sexual assault, and robbery. N.J.S.A. 2C:43-7.1(a). The statute
provides that
13
[a] person convicted of a crime under any of the
following: N.J.S.A. 2C:11-3; subsection a. of N.J.S.A.
2C:11-4; a crime of the first degree under N.J.S.A.
2C:13-1, paragraphs (3) through (6) of subsection a. of
N.J.S.A. 2C:14-2; N.J.S.A. 2C:15-1; or section 1 of L.
1993, c. 221 ([N.J.S.A.] 2C:15-2), who has been
convicted of two or more crimes that were committed
on prior and separate occasions, regardless of the dates
of the convictions, under any of the foregoing sections
or under any similar statute of the United States, this
State, or any other state for a crime that is substantially
equivalent to a crime under any of the foregoing
sections, shall be sentenced to a term of life
imprisonment by the court, with no eligibility for
parole.
[Ibid.]
This Court upheld the constitutionality of the Three Strikes Law more
than twenty years ago in State v. Oliver, 162 N.J. at 585-88. In that case, we
first determined that the law does not violate the double jeopardy clause of the
State and Federal Constitutions because the enhanced sentence is not imposed
“‘as either a new jeopardy or additional penalty for earlier crimes,’ but instead
as a ‘stiffened penalty for the latest crime, which was considered to be an
aggravated offense because it is a repetitive one.’” Id. at 586 (quoting Witte v.
United States, 515 U.S. 389, 400 (1995)). We also concluded that the statute
did not offend separation of powers by “impermissibly increas[ing] the
discretionary power of prosecutors while stripping the judiciary of all
discretion to craft sentences,” noting that the Legislature’s “‘power to preclude
14
judicial suspension of sentences’” is inherent in the “‘power to enact
mandatory sentencing laws in the first place.’” Id. at 586-87 (quoting State v.
Des Marets, 92 N.J. 62, 80-81 (1983)). We likewise rejected arguments that
the Law violates the Ex Post Facto and Equal Protection Clauses. Id. at 587,
589-92.
Most importantly for present purposes, our holding in Oliver made clear
that the Three Strikes Law does not constitute cruel and unusual punishment.
Id. at 588-89. Applying the required “three-part inquiry,” we first found that
the statute comports with contemporary standards of decency, as the federal
government and at least twenty-four other jurisdictions had enacted similar
legislation. Id. at 588. We further determined that the enhanced life-without-
parole sentence is not grossly disproportionate where the offense is a
dangerous first-degree crime. Id. at 588-89. Finally, we concluded that the
enhanced sentence was necessary to fulfill the traditional penological objective
of incapacitating recidivist offenders, who pose a particular danger to society.
Id. at 589. Whether the same result is compelled when one of the three
qualifying offenses was committed when the defendant was a juvenile requires
review of the federal and state constitutional protections embodied in Miller
and Zuber, and their application to this appeal.
15
D.
In Miller, the United States Supreme Court held that mandatory life-
without-parole sentences constitute cruel and unusual punishment when
imposed on juvenile offenders. 567 U.S. at 465. Although the U.S. Supreme
Court stressed that sentencing courts must consider “how children are
different, and how those differences counsel against irrevocably sentencing
them to lifetime in prison,” it did not foreclose juveniles from being sentenced
to life without parole. Id. at 480. Instead, the Court instructed sentencing
courts to take into consideration the “hallmark features” of youth, the nature of
the juvenile’s environment, the effect of youthful “incompetencies” on the
prosecution’s outcome, and the “possibility of rehabilitation”:
Mandatory life without parole for a juvenile precludes
consideration of his chronological age and its hallmark
features -- among them, immaturity, impetuosity, and
failure to appreciate risks and consequences. It
prevents taking into account the family and home
environment that surrounds him -- and from which he
cannot usually extricate himself -- no matter how brutal
or dysfunctional. It neglects the circumstances of the
homicide offense, including the extent of his
participation in the conduct and the way familial and
peer pressures may have affected him. Indeed, it
ignores that he might have been charged and convicted
of a lesser offense if not for incompetencies associated
with youth -- for example, his inability to deal with
police officers or prosecutors (including on a plea
agreement) or his incapacity to assist his own attorneys.
And finally, this mandatory punishment disregards the
16
possibility of rehabilitation even when the
circumstances most suggest it.
[Id. at 477-78 (citations omitted).]
In Zuber, we built upon this federal juvenile sentencing jurisprudence
and extended application of the Miller factors to situations where a juvenile is
facing a term of imprisonment that is the practical equivalent to life without
parole. 227 N.J. at 429-30. In doing so, we acknowledged that “Miller’s
concerns apply broadly: to cases in which a defendant commits multiple
offenses during a single criminal episode; to cases in which a defendant
commits multiple offenses on different occasions; and to homicide and non -
homicide cases.” Id. at 448. We did not, however, extend Miller’s protections
to defendants sentenced for crimes committed when those defendants were
over the age of eighteen.
IV.
A.
Defendant asserts that the constitutional protections against cruel and
unusual punishment bar application of the Three Strikes Law to any individual
who committed at least one of the predicate offenses as a juvenile.
Nevertheless, application of the three-factor test for cruel and unusual
punishment utilized in Miller and Zuber to the Three Strikes Law leads us to
the same conclusion today as it did over twenty years ago in Oliver, 162 N.J.
17580. The Three Strikes Law and its application to defendant are both
constitutionally permissible.
First, a survey of other jurisdictions demonstrates that the Three Strikes
Law continues to conform to contemporary standards of decency. Federal
Courts of Appeals have overwhelmingly held that the Eighth Amendment does
not prohibit counting juvenile offenses as strikes. See, e.g., United States v.
Hunter, 735 F.3d 172, 174-76 (4th Cir. 2013); United States v. Graham, 622
F.3d 445, 461-64 (6th Cir. 2010); United States v. Salahuddin, 509 F.3d 858,
863-64 (7th Cir. 2007); United States v. Scott, 610 F.3d 1009, 1018 (8th Cir.
2010); United States v. Edwards, 734 F.3d 850, 851, 853 (9th Cir. 2013);
United States v. Orona, 724 F.3d 1297, 1307-08 (10th Cir. 2013); United
States v. Hoffman, 710 F.3d 1228, 1233 (11th Cir. 2013).
And most states with similar three-strikes legislation count juvenile-age
convictions as strikes where the defendant was waived up to adult court. See,
e.g., Wilson v. State, 521 S.W.3d 123, 128 (Ark. 2017); Vickers v. State, 117
A.3d 516, 519-20 (Del. 2015); State v. Standard, 569 S.E.2d 325, 326, 328-29
(S.C. 2002); State v. Teas, 447 P.3d 606, 619-20 (Wash. Ct. App. 2019),
review denied, 460 P.3d 182 (Wash. 2020); Commonwealth v. Lawson, 90
A.3d 1, 6-8 (Pa. Super. Ct. 2014). Cf. Tenn. Code Ann. § 40-35-120(e)(3)
18
(providing that juvenile-age convictions in adult court count as predicate
offenses so long as the conviction resulted in a custodial sentence).6
Second, an enhanced life-without-parole sentence is not grossly
disproportionate where the offense is a dangerous and violent first-degree
crime, such as armed robbery or attempted murder, the offenses for which
defendant here received his final strike. 7 Furthermore, as we noted in Oliver,
repeat offenders are already subject to mandatory enhanced sentences under
other statutes like the Habitual Offender Act and the Graves Act. See 162 N.J.
at 588-89. This consistent application of extended terms reflects a legislative
determination that such lengthy sentences are proportionate to the offenses
covered by these statutes.
Lastly and most importantly, the punishment serves the legitimate
penological objective of incapacitating serious third-time offenders. The
6
We note that those states that have chosen to limit application of their
recidivist statutes to individuals who committed their first qualifying offense
when over the age of eighteen have all done so through the legislative process.
See, e.g., Ky. Rev. Stat. Ann. 532.080(2), (3); N.M. Stat. Ann. § 31-18-23(C);
N.D. Cent. Code § 12.1-32-09(1)(c); Wyo. Stat. Ann. § 6-10-201(b)(ii).
Whether to amend our law in that way is for the Legislature to determine.
7
Despite our dissenting colleague’s insistence to the contrary, State v.
Laurick, 120 N.J. 1 (1990), is not an “apt comparison” for analyzing the
grossly disproportionate factor or any other issue in this case. See post at ___
(slip op. at 12). Our decision in Laurick is predicated on the Sixth Amendment
right to counsel, not the Eighth Amendment’s bar on cruel and unusual
punishment.
19
Three Strikes Law “was a response to a genuine legislative concern that repeat
offenders pose a unique danger to society,” as rehabilitative efforts have failed
those defendants. Oliver, 162 N.J. at 589. Accordingly, the Legislature
determined that an enhanced sentence of life without parole is necessary to
protect the public from the most dangerous persistent offenders.
Here, defendant received his enhanced sentence on his third armed
robbery conviction, having already served three and a third years of a ten-year
prison sentence for his first offense, committed at the age of sixteen.
Defendant was not only undeterred by incarceration, but his crimes committed
after release from state prison grew increasingly violent: defendant assaulted
two Wawa employees during the commission of his first post-release offense
and then, before his arrest, shot a store clerk during his final robbery.
In sum, defendant’s sentence accords with all elements of the three-part
test and therefore does not constitute cruel and unusual punishment within the
meaning of the Federal or State Constitution. 8
8
Again, defendant challenged his sentence on the sole basis that he committed
the first predicate offense while he was a juvenile. Our finding that the Three
Strikes Law is valid on its face leaves open the possibility for relief via
specific as-applied challenges in other cases that present unusual
circumstances.
20
B.
Nor do defendant and amici’s arguments regarding legislative intent, the
requirements of Miller and Zuber, or other constitutional principles militate in
favor of vacating defendant’s sentence.
Defendant attributes significance to the fact that the Legislature limited
the definition of recidivists under the persistent offender statute, N.J.S.A.
2C:44-3(a), to defendants over the age of twenty-one who committed their
three qualifying crimes after turning eighteen. He contends that this definition
shows the Legislature could not have intended to allow juvenile-age offenses
to be considered under the Three Strikes Law.
This argument is unavailing. The statute to which defendant points
illustrates plainly that the Legislature knows how to establish minimum ages
for predicate offenses. It chose to do so in the persistent offender statute,
which was enacted in 1978 and has been amended on numerous occasions
since then without alteration to the age requirement. See N.J.S.A. 2C:44-3(a).9
Yet, despite its attention to the age limits for predicate offenses in the
9
In 1979, the Legislature revealed its attentiveness to the statute’s age
requirements when it amended N.J.S.A. 2C:44-3(a) “to clarify that the
defendant must be 21 at the time of the commission of the crime for which he
is to be judged a persistent offender” rather than the date he is sentenced. S.
Judiciary Comm. Statement to S. 3202 9-10 (June 18, 1979); see L. 1979, c.
178, § 95.
21
persistent offender statute, the Legislature did not include similar limits when
it enacted the Three Strikes Law in 1995. See L. 1995, c. 126, § 2. Nor did it
impose such limits when it modified the Three Strikes Law in 2003 to clarify
that the strikes are established by date of the offense, not the date of the
conviction, see L. 2003, c. 48, § 1, even though, by then, the statute had been
applied for eight years without regard to the age at which the first or second
strikes were committed.
It is the Legislature’s prerogative to impose a requirement in one context
but not another; it is our duty to treat that distinction as meaningful. See, e.g.,
In re Registrant H.D., 241 N.J. 412, 423 (2020) (“The PSL provisions
demonstrate that the Legislature knows how to tie Megan’s Law requirements
to non-Megan’s Law offenses when it chooses; it did not choose to do so in
subsection (f).”). The persistent offender statute notably encompasses a wider
range of graded offenses -- first-, second-, and third-degree qualifying crimes
-- than the Three Strikes Law, which is limited to certain first-degree violent
offenses. The difference in application of the two statutes reflects a deliberate
choice by the Legislature to further designate those offenses covered under the
Three Strikes Law as especially egregious and requiring the defendant’s
incapacitation -- even where one of the predicate offenses was committed by a
juvenile. This Court will “neither rewrite a plainly written enactment of the
22
Legislature nor presume that the Legislature intended something other than
that expressed by way of the plain language.” 10 State v. J.V., 242 N.J. 432,
443 (2020) (alteration omitted) (quoting O’Connell v. State, 171 N.J. 484, 488
(2002)).
Defendant also contends that, by counting juvenile-age crimes as
predicate offenses, the Three Strikes Law deprives the offender of a
meaningful opportunity to rehabilitate and reenter society as contemplated by
Miller and Zuber. Defendant insists therefore that Miller and Zuber must
necessarily change the outcome of our constitutional analysis. We disagree.
Miller and Zuber are intended to afford juveniles an opportunity for
rehabilitation and ultimate release from incarceration. See Miller, 567 U.S. at
479 (finding that “children’s . . . heightened capacity for change” necessarily
limits the “appropriate occasions for sentencing juveniles to” life without
parole); Zuber, 227 N.J. at 451 (noting that “it is difficult at an early age to
differentiate between the immature offender who may reform and the juvenile
10
Because we will not rewrite the plain language of a legislative enactment,
we likewise dismiss the Rutgers Clinic’s contention that offenses should not
count as strikes under the Three Strikes Law until a defendant reaches the age
of twenty-six. The Legislature has chosen eighteen as the threshold age for
adulthood in criminal sentencing. Although this choice may seem arbitrary, “a
line must be drawn,” and “[t]he age of [eighteen] is the point where society
draws the line for many purposes between childhood and adulthood.” Roper,
543 U.S. at 574.
23
who is irreparably corrupt”). Thus, Miller and Zuber are uniquely concerned
with the sentencing of juvenile offenders to lifetime imprisonment or its
functional equivalent without the possibility of parole.
Defendant committed his second and third armed robberies as a twenty-
three year old, and was therefore an adult being sentenced for a crime
committed as an adult. There is nothing in Miller or Zuber that precludes
application of a recidivist statute such as the Three Strikes Law to an adult
defendant who meets the carefully considered statutory requirements set by the
Legislature. Indeed, as we made clear in Oliver, the enhanced sentence under
the Three Strikes Law is not imposed “‘as either a new jeopardy or additional
penalty for earlier crimes,’ but instead as a ‘stiffened penalty for the latest
crime.’” 162 N.J. at 586 (quoting Witte, 515 U.S. at 400). The Three Strikes
Law thus applies to those offenders who “have forfeited the opportunity to
attempt rehabilitation, having failed repeatedly to desist from serious criminal
conduct.” State v. Galiano, 349 N.J. Super. 157, 165 (App. Div. 2002). As an
adult who committed a third armed robbery, defendant satisfied the statutory
preconditions of the Three Strikes Law and was sentenced accordingly.
Finally, we reject the ACDL’s argument that constitutional principles of
fundamental fairness preclude juvenile convictions from being counted as
predicate offenses under the Three Strikes Law. The fundamental fairness
24
doctrine “serves to protect citizens generally against unjust and arbitrary
governmental action” where there is otherwise “no explicit statutory or
constitutional protection to be invoked.” State v. Njango, 247 N.J. 533, 548-
49 (2021) (quoting Doe v. Poritz, 142 N.J. 1, 108-09 (1995)). We apply the
doctrine “sparingly and only where the interests involved are especially
compelling.” Id. at 549 (internal quotation marks omitted) (quoting State v.
Saavedra, 222 N.J. 39, 67 (2015)). We do not find the Legislature’s policy
decision to count qualifying juvenile-age crimes as strikes to be fundamentally
unfair because, as already explained, the enhanced life-without-parole sentence
is imposed only upon commission of a third, violent first-degree crime as an
adult.
We therefore hold that the Three Strikes Law and the mandatory life-
without-parole sentence imposed upon defendant under that statute do not
violate the constitutional prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. We
further hold that Miller and Zuber have no application to adult defendants
sentenced under the Three Strikes Law. Accordingly, we affirm defendant’s
sentence.
V.
For the reasons expressed, we affirm the judgment of the Appellate
Division.
25
CHIEF JUSTICE RABNER and JUSTICES PATTERSON and
FERNANDEZ-VINA join in JUSTICE SOLOMON’s opinion. JUSTICE ALBIN
filed a dissent, in which JUSTICE PIERRE-LOUIS joins.
26
State of New Jersey,
Plaintiff-Respondent,
v.
Samuel Ryan,
Defendant-Appellant.
JUSTICE ALBIN, dissenting.
Today, under New Jersey’s Three Strikes Law, the majority upholds
Samuel Ryan’s mandatory term of life imprisonment imposed on account of a
robbery he committed when he was sixteen years old. The Three Strikes Law
makes that “juvenile” robbery conviction a predicate crime (the first strike) --
along with the two crimes Ryan committed three weeks apart when he was
twenty-three years old (the two other strikes) -- authorizing the mandatory life
without parole sentence. See N.J.S.A. 2C:43-7.1(a).1 The majority finds that
the use of Ryan’s juvenile conviction to justify the life term does not violate
our federal and state prohibitions against cruel and unusual punishment.
1
A juvenile conviction in this opinion refers to any conviction in which a
defendant under the age of eighteen committed a criminal offense and was
waived up to adult court for prosecution.
1
That finding, however, can hardly be squared with this Court’s
consolidated opinion in State v. Comer and State v. Zarate, issued just one
month ago. In those cases, we stated that “children are different from adults”
because they “lack maturity, can be impetuous, are more susceptible to
pressure from others, and often fail to appreciate the long-term consequences
of their actions.” State v. Comer, ___ N.J. ___, ___ (2022) (slip op. at 4)
(citing Miller v. Alabama, 567 U.S. 460, 477 (2012)). Those distinguishing
factors of youth, among others, led this Court to hold that the lengthy
mandatory sentences imposed against Comer and Zarate for their juvenile
murder convictions were cruel and unusual under Article I, Paragraph 12 of
our State Constitution. Id. at ___ (slip op. at 5-6, 51). Comer and Zarate --
and similarly situated juveniles -- are therefore eligible for release after
serving twenty years, at which time the court will assess whether they are
rehabilitated and fit to reenter society. See id. at ___ (slip op. at 51).
On the other hand, Ryan must serve forty-seven years before he will be
eligible for release, based on his juvenile conviction. He will be seventy years
old at that time.2 He will have been warehoused in a prison for nearly five
2
A defendant convicted under the Three Strikes Law “shall be sentenced to a
term of life imprisonment by the court, with no eligibility for parole.”
N.J.S.A. 2C:43-7.1(a). Although sentenced to life imprisonment, “a defendant
who is at least 70 years of age and who has served at least 35 years in prison
2
decades, even if he had been totally rehabilitated and fit to reenter society
decades earlier.
Comer and Zarate established that culpability for juvenile crimes and
adult crimes cannot be weighed on the same scale because of the
distinguishing characteristics of youth, such as immaturity and impetuosity,
and because the juvenile brain is not fully developed. Id. at ___ (slip op. at 45,
49). On that basis, giving Ryan’s juvenile conviction the same constitutional
weight as his adult convictions under the Three Strikes Law is at odds with the
evolving standards of decency addressed in our federal and state constitutional
caselaw. See id. at ___ (slip op. at 41); see also, e.g., Miller, 567 U.S. at 469-
71; Graham v. Florida, 560 U.S. 48, 58, 67 (2010).
No one disputes that Ryan has committed serious crimes warranting
punishment and a lengthy sentence. But a law that mechanically imposes a
grossly disproportionate sentence, a law that strips a court from considering
the incapacitating element of youth, and a law that denies the court all
discretion in fashioning a sentence based on a youthful conviction cannot be
. . . shall be released on parole if the full Parole Board determines that the
defendant is not a danger to the safety of any other person or the community. ”
N.J.S.A. 2C:43-7.1(e).
3
reconciled with our federal or state constitutional jurisprudence. Cf. Jones v.
Mississippi, 593 U.S. ___, 141 S. Ct. 1307, 1311 (2021).
No law is superior to the Constitution. In Ryan’s case, and other similar
cases, the Three Strikes Law must comport with the dictates of the federal and
state constitutional prohibitions against cruel and unusual punishment. In my
view, under the Eighth Amendment and Article I, Paragraph 12 of our State
Constitution, judges cannot be denied discretion in determining whether a
juvenile conviction can be the basis for a predicate offense under the Three
Strikes Law for the purpose of sentencing a twenty-three-year-old to a lifetime
of imprisonment. Additionally, I would hold that our State Constitution bars a
juvenile conviction from serving as a predicate offense under the Three Strikes
Law.
The majority’s decision does not end the debate. The Legislature has the
power to conform the Three Strikes Law to its conception of the evolving
standards of decency of a mature society -- and to bring consistency to its
legislative scheme in the Code of Criminal Justice.
I would find that Ryan’s juvenile conviction cannot be considered a
predicate offense for the purpose of imposing a mandatory life sentence under
the Three Strikes Law but may be considered in setting Ryan’s overall
sentence for the crimes he committed when he was twenty-three years old.
4
I.
In 1996, twenty-three-year-old Samuel Ryan committed serious first-
degree crimes within three weeks of each other. If convicted only of those
crimes, the court would have had discretion to sentence Ryan to prison for
many decades. But because the Three Strikes Law designated a juvenile
conviction as a predicate offense, the court was compelled to impose a
mandatory life sentence.
The Three Strikes Law provides that a defendant “convicted of two or
more [violent crimes enumerated in the statute] that were committed on prior
and separate occasions, regardless of the dates of the convictions . . . shall be
sentenced to a term of life imprisonment by the court, with no eligibility for
parole.” N.J.S.A. 2C:43-7.1(a). The statute does not specifically exempt
crimes committed by a juvenile defendant.
In 1989, Ryan pled guilty to two first-degree robberies, after he was
denied the rehabilitative services of the juvenile court system and waived up to
adult court. At the sentencing hearing, in a cry for help, his mother explained
that her sixteen-year-old son was a troubled youth. She stated:
For years I’ve been trying to give Sammy some kind of
mental help that’s been ordered numerous times. It’s
never been given, and I don’t believe his mental state
ever has been what it should be. I know that he has a
mental problem . . . . I’m not a doctor and I don’t have
the means to hire a private psychiatrist to see my
5
son . . . . I don’t know what else to do but I know my
son and I know he’s not all that bad. I know he’s been
easily to be led, but a lot of these things that he has done
I don’t believe he can help himself. He has the mind,
the willingness to do right, but a lot of times he doesn’t
even know why he does things himself.
After balancing the aggravating and mitigating factors, the court
sentenced Ryan to a ten-year prison term, subject to a three-year-and-four-
month period of parole ineligibility. Three years after his release from prison,
Ryan committed the crimes that constituted his second and third strikes under
the Three Strikes Law. In 1997, Ryan was sentenced to life without parole
based on the first strike -- the crime he committed at age sixteen.
II.
The United States and New Jersey Constitutions bar cruel and unusual
punishment. U.S. Const. amend. VIII; N.J. Const. art. I, ¶ 12. Under both
Constitutions, three questions are considered in determining whether a
punishment is cruel and unusual: (1) “does the punishment for the crime
conform with contemporary standards of decency?”; (2) “is the punishment
grossly disproportionate to the offense?”; and (3) “does the punishment go
beyond what is necessary to accomplish any legitimate penological objective?”
State v. Zuber, 227 N.J. 422, 438 (2017) (quoting State v. Ramseur, 106 N.J.
123, 169 (1987)); accord Graham, 560 U.S. at 67-68. By that measure, the use
6
of Ryan’s juvenile offense as a predicate for imposing a mandatory life
sentence without parole contravenes both our Federal and State Constitutions.
A.
First, in my view, the imposition of a mandatory life sentence based on a
predicate juvenile conviction does not “conform with contemporary standards
of decency.” Judicial decisions and recent legislative enactments are the
“clearest and most reliable objective evidence of contemporary values.” Cf.
Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304, 312 (2002) (quoting Penry v. Lynaugh, 492
U.S. 302, 331 (1989)). Our Court has acknowledged “time and again” that
“children are different.” Comer, ___ N.J. at ___ (slip op. at 41).
The United States Supreme Court and our Court recognize what social
science has long understood: “children lack maturity and responsibility, which
can lead to ‘ill-considered actions’”; “they ‘are more vulnerable to negative
influences and outside pressures’”; “their character ‘is not as well formed’ as
an adult’s”; and “their misconduct is not as morally culpable as an adult’s.”
Id. at ___ (slip op. at 45) (citing Roper v. Simmons, 543 U.S. 551, 569-70
(2005)). Science has taught us “that ‘parts of the brain involved in behavior
control continue to mature through late adolescence,’ accounting for one of the
‘fundamental differences between juvenile and adult minds.’” State in Interest
of C.K., 233 N.J. 44, 69 (2018) (quoting Graham, 560 U.S. at 68).
7
Our evolving jurisprudence has grown increasingly skeptical about the
constitutionality of lengthy sentences or permanent disabilities based on
youthful offenses. See id. at 68-70. Just one month ago, this Court held that
sentencing a juvenile to a mandatory thirty-year prison term without parole
eligibility for a murder conviction under N.J.S.A. 2C:11-3(b)(1) constituted
cruel and unusual punishment and thus violated Article I, Paragraph 12 of our
State Constitution. See Comer, ___ N.J. at ___ (slip op. at 5-6). As a
constitutional remedy, this Court now affords juveniles convicted of murder
the opportunity of judicial review of their sentences after serving twenty years
of imprisonment -- the opportunity of establishing their rehabilitation and their
ability to reenter society as productive members. Id. at ___ (slip op. at 6-7).
Yet, under the majority’s decision here, Ryan, who was sentenced at the age of
twenty-three for non-homicide offenses, must serve a minimum of forty-seven
years in prison based on a predicate juvenile conviction under the Three
Strikes Law.
Recent legislation has reinforced the notion that youth must play a
discretionary role in the imposition of sentences. In 2020, the Legislature
amended the New Jersey Code of Criminal Justice to include as a mitigating
sentencing factor that the “defendant was under 26 years of age at the time of
the commission of the offense.” L. 2020, c. 110, § 1 (codified at N.J.S.A.
8
2C:44-1(b)(14)). Upon signing the law, Governor Murphy released a
statement quoting some of the sponsors of the new law, who emphasized the
importance of weighing youth in the sentencing process: “The social,
emotional and mental maturity of a youthful defendant is complex and
nuanced. That very fact makes it critical for the age of a defendant to be
factored by the court in criminal culpability.” Office of the Governor, Press
Release: Statement Upon Signing A. 4373 (Oct. 19, 2020).
The Legislature’s recognition that “children are different” is also
reflected in recent amendments to the juvenile waiver statute. In 2015, the
Legislature raised the minimum age of waiver of a juvenile to adult court from
fourteen to fifteen, L. 2015, c. 89, § 1 (codified at N.J.S.A. 2A:4A-26.1(c)(1)),
and heightened the role of courts in reviewing prosecutorial decisions to waive
juveniles to adult court, L. 2015, c. 89, § 1 (codified at N.J.S.A. 2A:4A-
26.1(c)(2)). The sponsors’ statements attached to the bills, which increased
the waiver age, referred to the “new research on adolescent brain development
disproving the presumption that juveniles who commit crimes think like
adults.” Sponsor Statement to S. 2003 8 (Apr. 28, 2014); Sponsor Statement to
A. 4299 8 (Mar. 16, 2015).
Currently, the Code of Criminal Justice takes an inconsistent approach to
the use of a juvenile conviction for enhanced sentencing purposes. The
9
Persistent Offender Statute, which authorizes a court to impose an extended-
term sentence on a defendant, specifically prohibits consideration of any
offense committed by that defendant when he was a juvenile. See N.J.S.A.
2C:44-3(a) (defining a persistent offender, in part, as “a person who at the time
of the commission of the crime is 21 years of age or over, who has been
previously convicted on at least two separate occasions of two crimes,
committed at different times, when he was at least 18 years of age” (emphasis
added)). Thus, under the Persistent Offender Statute, a court cannot impose an
extended-term sentence -- a sentence increased from the second-degree range
to the first-degree range -- based on a juvenile offense; yet, under the Three
Strikes Law, the court can impose a mandatory life sentence for a youthful
offense.
The Three Strikes Law is one expression of legislative policy seemingly
at odds with other policies within the overall scheme of the Code of Criminal
Justice. Those inconsistencies do not alone render the Three Strikes Law
infirm. But the new legislative enactments reflect evolving contemporary
standards that bear on the constitutional issue before us.
In assessing contemporary standards, we may look to the law of other
states. Several jurisdictions that have a Three Strikes Law similar to New
Jersey’s bar the use of a youthful offense as a predicate for imposing a
10
mandatory life term on a defendant. See, e.g., N.M. Stat. Ann. § 31-18-23(C);
Wyo. Stat. Ann. § 6-10-201(b)(ii); 730 Ill. Comp. Stat. 5/5-4.5-95(a)(4)(E).
B.
Additionally, Ryan’s mandatory term of life imprisonment, based on a
predicate juvenile conviction, and imposed at the age of twenty-three, is a
grossly disproportionate punishment in light of our approach in Comer. A
youthful offender, just shy of his eighteenth birthday, who commits an
egregious murder will have the opportunity for a review of his thirty -year
sentence without parole eligibility after twenty years. See Comer, ___ N.J. at
___ (slip op. at 51). That is so because the incapacities attributed to youth,
such as lack of maturity, impulsiveness, and reckless risk-taking without
regard to consequences, tend to lessen moral culpability. Id. at ___ (slip op. at
45). Our constitutional jurisprudence strongly indicates that a juvenile
conviction should not be afforded the same weight as an adult conviction and
should not be the basis in a recidivist statute for meting out the harshest
penalty in our criminal code -- a mandatory life term.
An apt comparison is this Court’s decision in State v. Laurick, in which
we placed constitutional limitations on the use of an uncounseled conviction in
driving while intoxicated (DWI) cases under the relevant recidivist statute.
120 N.J. 1, 4 (1990). In Laurick, “[w]e held that a prior uncounseled DWI
11
conviction could ‘not be used to increase a defendant’s loss of liberty’” for
sentencing purposes upon a subsequent DWI conviction. State v. Patel, 239
N.J. 424, 438 (2019) (quoting Laurick, 120 N.J. at 4). The basic logic of
Laurick was that the use of a prior uncounseled conviction as a predicate
offense to enhance a custodial sentence was fundamentally unjust. See
Laurick, 120 N.J. at 16-17. The same notion of injustice applies to the use of a
juvenile conviction as a predicate offense for the Three Strikes Law. The use
of a juvenile conviction for that purpose renders hollow this Court’s repeated
refrain that “children are different.”
Based on the majority’s constitutional deference to the Three Strikes
Law, a defendant who has two prior first-degree juvenile convictions may be
sentenced to a term of life imprisonment without parole eligibility if he
committed his third first-degree conviction at the age of eighteen. But, under
the Persistent Offender Statute, the same defendant could not even receive an
extended term of imprisonment for the third conviction. Such comparisons
shed light on the grossly disproportionate outcomes that result from the current
statutory scheme.
C.
Finally, punishing twenty-three-year-old Ryan with a sentence of life
without parole eligibility -- based on a juvenile conviction -- “go[es] beyond
12
what is necessary to accomplish any legitimate penological objective.” See
Zuber, 227 N.J. at 438. The Three Strikes Law strips the court of all discretion
to determine whether incapacitating Ryan for less than forty-seven years will
serve society’s desire for retribution or the need for incapacitation or
deterrence. Cf. Jones, 593 U.S. at ___, 141 S. Ct. at 1311 (holding that a
juvenile homicide offender may be sentenced to life without parole so long as
“the sentence is not mandatory and the sentencer . . . has discretion to impose a
lesser punishment”). The rigid application of the Three Strikes Law deprives
the court of the opportunity of exercising its judgment to determine whether
Ryan can be rehabilitated before his seventieth birthday.
As applied in this case, the Three Strikes Law is a blunt and cruel
instrument -- ignoring Ryan’s unique circumstances and background -- and
condemns him to a lifetime behind bars, without any regard to his potential for
rehabilitation and reformation and without any hope of a meaningful future.
III.
If, as this Court has professed in Comer, C.K., and Zuber, children are
different, then the use of a juvenile conviction as a predicate offense to impose
a term of life imprisonment without parole eligibility is cruel and unusual
punishment under Article I, Paragraph 12 of the New Jersey Constitution.
This Court has detailed at length the infirmities of youth in those opinions, and
13
yet the majority gives the same constitutional weight to the juvenile conviction
as it does the two “adult” crimes committed when Ryan was twenty-three years
old. Nor should we forget that the Legislature has decreed that when a
defendant is “under 26 years of age at the time of the commission of the
offense,” age is a mitigating sentencing factor. See N.J.S.A. 2C:44-1(b)(14).
No court has made the discretionary determination that Ryan is totally
beyond the pale of redemption and rehabilitation. The Three Strikes Law
offends the Federal Constitution because it deprives the court of its discretion
to fashion a sentence that does not constitute cruel and unusual punishment.
Cf. Jones, 593 U.S. at ___, 141 S. Ct. at 1318 (“[D]iscretionary sentencing
allows the sentencer to consider the defendant’s youth, and thereby helps
ensure that life-without-parole sentences are imposed only in cases where that
sentence is appropriate in light of the defendant’s age.”). It also offends our
State Constitution because Ryan is denied the lookback review provided to
Comer and Zarate, both convicted of murder. See Comer, ___ N.J. at ___ (slip
op. at 53).
Although the majority rejects Ryan’s argument that the use of his
juvenile conviction to impose a mandatory term of life imprisonment
constitutes cruel and unusual punishment, the Legislature will have the final
word on the subject. The Legislature too has a constitutional obligation and an
14
abiding interest to ensure that cruel and unusual punishments are not the
consequence of its enactments. The Legislature has an interest in ensuring that
the Code of Criminal Justice treats juvenile convictions in a consistent manner.
The Legislature can amend the Three Strikes Law to account for the infirmities
of youth and mitigate the inflexibility of imposing a mandatory life term based
on a juvenile conviction.
Because I conclude that the mandatory term of life imprisonment
imposed in this case violates the federal and state prohibitions against cruel
and unusual punishment, I respectfully dissent.
15