The U.S. Supreme Court has twice rebuked the Arizona Supreme Court for ignoring precedent in death penalty cases.
A third state court decision last year appeared to clash with another Supreme Court case, which held that juvenile offenders could be sentenced to death in prison under state laws that don't allow for the possibility of parole.
The decision triggered a kind of judicial deja vu, 15 law professors told the justices in a recent concurring opinion.
“Arizona's refusal to follow precedent has once again forced Arizonans to come before this Court to assert their robust constitutional rights,” the professors wrote, urging the Court to hear the juvenile offenders' appeals. “Without intervention this time around, people serving life sentences for crimes they committed as juveniles will continue to serve their unconstitutional sentences.”
In 2012, in Miller v. Alabama, the Supreme Court struck down such mandatory sentences for youth who committed murder while under the age of 18. To be constitutional, the court said, state laws must at least give judges the option of imposing life sentences with the possibility of parole.
As recently as 2021, even after its rightward shift, the Supreme Court reaffirmed its fundamental principle that “a person under the age of 18 who commits murder may be sentenced to life imprisonment, but only if the sentence is not mandatory and the sentencer has the discretion to impose a lighter punishment.”
The new case involves Ronnie Bassett, who was convicted of two murders when he was 16. When he was sentenced in 2006, Arizona law gave the judge no option but to impose a sentence of life without parole.
The Arizona Supreme Court unanimously disagreed last year, but said the law was constitutional because of a unique feature of the state law that allows judges to choose between a “life sentence” without the possibility of release in any form or a life sentence without parole but theoretically eligible for gubernatorial clemency.
The Court rejected the common understanding of previous cases, stating that “Miller and its derivative decisions do not specifically require the possibility of parole when sentencing juvenile offenders.”
Bassett's lawyers asked the Supreme Court to intervene, arguing that his case could affect the fates of more than 20 other juvenile offenders. They wrote that the case “raises extremely serious questions about bargaining and the supremacy of federal law.”
The justices are likely to act in the coming weeks.
In a striking brief urging the Supreme Court not to hear Bassett v. Arizona, No. 23-830, Arizona Attorney General Christine K. Mays chose not to defend the state supreme court's reasoning.
“Parole eligibility is constitutional,” Mays wrote. “This fact has been established in our court's precedents and is undisputed by the State of Arizona.”
She instead defended the case's outcome on new grounds not relied upon by the Arizona Supreme Court, and which are a bit harder to understand.
At the time of Bassett's sentence, she wrote, there was a widespread misconception among Arizona judges and lawyers that one of the provisions of the state law at issue allowed for life in prison with the possibility of parole. “That misconception appears to have been widespread,” she added.
The judge thought he was choosing between sentences that included the possibility of parole, but chose the harsher option, so it appears he was following Miller even though the law did not actually give him a choice.
“According to Bassett, the options legally available at sentencing are where the analysis begins and ends,” Mays wrote. “But while this may be a classic case, it may not be so simple in unusual circumstances where the sentencing judge misinterprets the law.”
There are problems with this argument. First, Bassett's lawyers told the justices that the idea that all Arizona judges were unaware of the law is “demonstrably false.” They cited a series of cases that prove this.
Second, Bassett's lawyers wrote, “accepting the state theory would permit states to violate the federal Constitution based on a presumption that state courts are ignorant of their own state's laws.”
There is good reason to believe that Arizona's law is inconsistent with Miller because the decision so states it and lists the state's law as one of 29 states that “mandate life sentences for children.”
Other states have since taken steps to comply with the Constitution, the law professors wrote in a supporting brief, but Arizona remains an “extreme exception,” they said.
They asked the judge to intervene.
“The Court should tell Arizona that enough is enough, as it has done before when Arizona refused to follow binding precedent,” the professors wrote.