Commonwealth v. Wiggins

Juvenile Law Center, in collaboration with the Defender Association of Philadelphia and faculty at Temple University Beasley School of Law, Boston University School of Law and the University of San Francisco School of Law, filed an appeal in the Pennsylvania Superior Court on behalf of Sharon Wiggins. Ms. Wiggins pled guilty to murder in 1969 and was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. At the time of the crime, Ms. Wiggins was seventeen years old.  She is now sixty-years-old.

In the brief, Juvenile Law Center argues that a mandatory sentence of life without parole for a juvenile convicted of murder violates both the United States and Pennsylvania Constitutions as well as international law. In Graham v. Florida, the United States Supreme Court considered the constitutionality of a life without parole sentence imposed upon a juvenile convicted of a non-homicide offense. The Court held the sentence unconstitutional, grounding its decision in developmental and scientific research demonstrating that juveniles possess a greater capacity for rehabilitation than adults, and reasoning that the sentence therefore served no legitimate penological purpose when applied to juveniles.  

The Pennsylvania Superior Court denied relief, finding that Ms. Wiggins’s petition for post-conviction relief was untimely. 

Juvenile Law Center appealed to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. 

In August 2012, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court denied the petition for allowance of appeal, but noted Ms. Wiggins’s right to file a new PCRA petition premised on the recently decided Miller v. Alabama. 

In March 2013, Ms. Wiggins passed away in prison at the age of 62.