People v. Carp

Juvenile Law Center filed an amicus brief in the Michigan Supreme Court on behalf of Raymond Carp, Cortez Davis, and Dakotah Eliason, who were each convicted of first degree murder for crimes committed as teenages, and for which they each received a life without parole sentence. Carp and Davis have cases on collateral review, and Eliason's case is on direct appeal.

Juvenile Law Center's brief argued that the sentences of Carp, Davis, and Eliason are unconstitutional pursuant to the United States Supreme Court's ruling in Miller v. Alabama, which banned mandatory life without parole sentences for juveniles. At the time each was sentenced for crimes committed as minors, Michigan law mandated a life without parole sentence for their murder-based offenses. As applied to juvenile offenders, this mandatory scheme is unconstitutional pursuant to Miller. Before the Michigan Supreme Court is whether Miller should be given retroactive effect and thus, whether Carp and Davis should be resented following an individualized sentencing hearing. We asserted that Miller applies retroactively to cases like Carp's and Davis's, which were final before the decision came down from the U.S. Supreme Court and thus is being considered on collateral review.

Specifically, our brief argued that first, the United States Supreme Court has already answered the question of retroactivity by applying Miller to Kuntrell Jackson’s case, which was before the court on collateral review. Second, Miller announced a substantive rule, which pursuant to Supreme Court precedent applies retroactively. Third, even assuming the rule is procedural, Miller is a watershed rule of criminal procedure that applies retroactively. Finally, Miller must be applied retroactively because, once the Court determines that a punishment is cruel and unusual when imposed on a child, any continuing imposition of that sentence is itself a violation of the Eighth Amendment; the date upon which an unconstitutional mandatory life without parole sentence is imposed cannot convert it into a constitutional sentence. For each of these reasons, we argued that Miller applies retroactively to Carp and Davis.

Additionally, Carp and Davis were convicted of felony murder, on a theory of aider/abetter liability. In their cases, we argued that the prohibition against “cruel and unusual punishments” found in the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution categorically bars the imposition of a life without parole sentence on juvenile offenders convicted solely on the basis of having aided and abetted the commission of a felony murder. Further, any life without parole sentence for a juvenile convicted of felony murder is inconsistent with adolescent development and neuroscience research and is unconstitutional pursuant to Miller and Graham v. Florida, 560 U.S. 48 (2010) (holding that a life without parole sentence can never be imposed upon a juvenile when there is no finding that the juvenile either killed or intended to kill). 

In all three cases, we argued that every child convicted of murder in Michigan must receive an individualized sentence that takes into account his age and individual circumstances and, absent a finding that he is among the rare juveniles for whom life without parole is appropriate, he must be afforded a meaningful opportunity for release based on his demonstrated maturity and rehabilitation. See Graham, 560 U.S. 48. 

On July 8, 2014, the Michigan Supreme Court declined to apply Miller retroactively to Carp and Davis and remanded Eliason for further sentencing proceedings.

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