In the first of a possible 56 such cases, the Arkansas Supreme Court on Thursday ordered resentencing hearings for two men serving life terms without parole for crimes they committed as minors.
The new hearings for Kuntrell Jackson, now 27, and Lemuel Sission Whiteside, now 21, came about because of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Miller v. Alabama in 2012 that found that mandatory sentences of life in prison without parole for minors violated the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment stated in the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Jackson’s case was taken up as a companion to Miller v. Alabama at the Supreme Court.
The U.S. Supreme Court found that Arkansas’ mandatory sentencing guideline for capital murder prohibits “a sentencing authority from assessing whether the law’s harshest term of imprisonment proportionally punishes a juvenile offender” and that “[s]uch mandatory penalties, by their nature, preclude a sentencer from taking account of an offender’s age and the wealth of characteristics and circumstances attendant to it.”
Arkansas’ current capital-murder statute allows for only two penalties - death and life without parole - but a previous Supreme Court ruling barred executing inmates for crimes committed as minors.
Fifty-six state inmates, including Jackson and Whiteside, are serving life sentences without parole for committing capital murder when they were younger than 18, according to the Department of Correction.
During the recently concluded 89th General Assembly, the Legislature passed a law that would allow minors who are convicted of new offenses to be sentenced either to life without parole or life with the possibility of parole after serving a minimum of 28 years. Act 1490, sponsored by Rep. Nate Steel, D-Nashville, will take effect Aug. 16, 90 days after the session, which is expected to resume briefly in mid-May.
In taking up the issue after the federal ruling, which it quoted, the state Supreme Court found that Jackson should be allowed to “present for consideration evidence that would include that of his ‘age, age-related characteristics, and the nature of’ his crime” and be resentenced under the range allotted for Class Y felonies - 10-40 years or life in prison. His case was remanded for a hearing in Mississippi County Circuit Court.
In Whiteside’s case, Justice Cliff Hoofman refers to the Jackson opinion in ruling to remand Whiteside’s case to Pulaski County Circuit Court.
“In the present case, as in Jackson, we find that Whiteside’s capital-murder sentence should be reversed and remanded for resentencing under the discretionary range of a Class Y felony… . We also direct that a sentencing hearing be held in which Whiteside may present for the jury’s consideration any mitigating evidence as provided in Miller,” Hoofman wrote, citing the federal case.
On Nov. 18, 1999, Jackson reportedly acted as a lookout while his cousin, Travis Booker, 14, and Derrick Xavier Shields, 15, entered the Movie Magic store in Blytheville and demanded money from the clerk, Laurie Troup. When Troup did not comply, Shields shot her in the face with a shotgun.
Jackson was convicted of capital murder and aggravated robbery and sentenced to life without the possibility of parole in June 2003.
Whiteside was charged with capital murder and aggravated robbery in the death of James London on Jan. 28, 2009.
Prosecutors said at Whiteside’s trial that he planned to rob London after he learned that London would be visiting his mother at the family’s residence and would be in possession of a “significant amount of money” from a tax refund.
Whiteside and Cambrin Barnes, then 16, attempted to rob the man outside the residence, and Barnes shot and killed London when he lunged at the teen.
Barnes negotiated a guilty plea to first-degree murder in exchange for a 40-year sentence.
Whiteside was convicted of both charges at trial and received a mandatory sentence of life without parole for the capital-murder conviction and 35 years for the aggravated-robbery conviction.
In the state court’s opinion in the Jackson case, Justice Jo Hart wrote that simply changing the mandatory-sentencing statute to life with the possibility of parole - an argument raised by the state - would not allow for consideration of mitigating evidence as required by the Miller ruling. Instead, the court severed the offending language from the code to leave in place “capital murder is a Class Y felony.”
The same severance was applied in Whiteside’s case.
“This severance will not defeat the statute,” Hart wrote. “The purpose of [the subsection] was to provide a penalty for capital murder. Severing language from [the subsection] so that capital murder is a Class Y felony still serves that purpose by providing a penalty for the crime.”
Front Section, Pages 1 on 04/26/2013