Federal Court Issues Ruling Allowing 3 Juvenile Lifers to Seek Reconsideration of Sentences in District Court

Thanks to a federal ruling yesterday, three Pennsylvania inmates, convicted of murder offenses they committed as juveniles and sentenced to life without parole, will be able to petition the federal district court to reconsider their sentences.

In In re Pendleton, In re Baines, and In re Grant, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled that there is a legal basis to conclude that the U.S. Supreme Court's ban on mandatory life without parole sentences (in Miller v. Alabama, June 2012) is retroactive. On that basis, the Third Circuit granted permission for the three defendants to file petitions in district court, asking the court to reconsider their sentences. The Third Circuit left the door open for the question of retroactivity to be considered more fully by the district court. (Read the Third Circuit's opinion here.)

Juvenile Law Center, along with the Atlantic Center for Capital Representation and the Defender Association of Philadelphia, filed an amicus curiae ("friend-of-the-court") brief supporting Baines' motion seeking permission to file a petition in district court. We argued that Miller should apply retroactively in Baines' case, as well as in the cases of the more than 500 other juvenile lifers across Pennsylvania who were sentenced prior to the Miller ruling.

This decision comes on the heels of a similar decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Joseph Wang v. USA, in which Wang, a juvenile lifer, was granted permission to file a petition for reconsideration of his sentence in New York district court. Juvenile Law Center wrote an amicus brief supporting this petition in Wang's case. 

Read more about our work to end the practice of sentencing juveniles to life without parole here.