In Graham v. Florida, the Supreme Court of the United States held that
the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibits the imposition of a
life without parole sentence on a juvenile offender convicted for a nonhomicide
offense.[1]
The Supreme Court declined to answer whether any terms of years sentence would
violate the Eighth Amendment, giving lower courts no guidance on the issue.
Without any guidance from the Supreme Court or the United States Court of
Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, the Supreme Court of Missouri in Willbanks narrowly read Graham and held that terms of years
sentences for nonhomicide offenses, which leave a juvenile no realistic
opportunity for parole, do not violate the defendant’s Eighth Amendment rights.[2]
I. Facts and Holding
When Timothy Willbanks was seventeen
years old, he devised a plan to steal a car with two other individuals.[3]
While carrying a sawed-off shotgun, Willbanks approached a woman in the parking
lot of her apartment building in and ordered her to drive him to a nearby ATM,
where he took all of the money from her account.[4]
After leaving the ATM, Willbanks became agitated when the woman failed to
follow his driving directions and forced her into the trunk after she stopped
the car.[5]
Willbanks then drove to a new location, released the woman from the trunk,
stole her jewelry, and told her to leave.[6]
As the woman walked away, Willbanks shot her four times, causing permanent
disfigurement and irreparable injuries.[7]
Willbanks and his accomplices drove away, leaving the woman to crawl for forty
minutes to find help.[8]
After receiving treatment, the woman identified Willbanks out of a photograph
lineup.[9]
Willbanks and his two accomplices
were subsequently arrested and gave consistent confessions.[10]
At his trial, Willbanks was convicted of one count of kidnapping, one count of
first-degree assault, two counts of first-degree robbery, and three counts of
armed criminal action.[11]
The trial court sentenced Willbanks to fifteen years for kidnapping, life imprisonment
for first-degree assault, twenty years for each robbery count, and 100 years
for each armed criminal action count.[12]
The terms were set to run consecutively.[13]
After Willbanks’ convictions and
sentences were affirmed on appeal, he sought a judgment declaring that Missouri
Revised Statutes section 558.019 and Missouri Code of State Regulations
Annotated Title 14, section 80-2.010, which require offenders to serve specific
percentages of their sentences before they become parole-eligible, violated his
Eighth Amendment right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment given the
Supreme Court’s ruling in Graham v.
Florida.[14]
The trial court granted the Department of Corrections’ motion for judgment on
the pleadings, holding that Willbanks’ case was “distinguishable from Graham because Graham involved a single
sentence of life without parole for one offense and Willbanks was convicted of seven separate felonies and received
seven consecutive sentences as a result.”[15]
II. Legal Background
When the constitutional validity of
a statute is challenged, an appellate court reviews de novo.[16]
A statute will only be found unconstitutional if it clearly contravenes a
constitutional provision.[17]
The Eighth Amendment prohibits the
infliction of “cruel and unusual punishment.”[18]
The Supreme Court has promulgated the principle that the Eighth Amendment
requires states to “respect the human attributes even of those who have
committed serious crimes.”[19]
When reviewing whether a punishment violates the Eighth Amendment, “courts must
look beyond historical conceptions to the evolving standards of decency that
mark the progress of a maturing society.”[20]
The Supreme Court in Graham held that the Eighth Amendment
prohibits the imposition of a life without parole sentence on a juvenile
offender who did not commit a homicide.[21]
States do not have to guarantee the offender eventual release, but if states
impose a life sentence, it must provide the offender with “some realistic
opportunity to obtain release before the end of that term.”[22]
Miller v. Alabama expanded the Graham holding to prohibit homicide
juvenile offenders from being subject to a mandatory life sentence without
parole,[23]
and Montgomery v. Louisiana held that
the Miller holding would be applied
retroactively.[24]
III. Instant Decision
In Willbanks, the Supreme Court of Missouri affirmed the trial court’s
finding that Missouri’s mandatory minimum parole statutes and regulations did
not violate Willbanks’ Eighth Amendment rights.[25]
Willbanks argued that Missouri’s statutes and regulations requiring offenders
serve a percentage of their total sentence before becoming eligible for parole
were unconstitutional as applied to him because he would not be eligible for
parole until past his life expectancy.[26]
Essentially, Willbanks argued that serving the statutory minimum for his
aggregated sentences for the seven nonhomicide offenses prevented him from
having a “meaningful opportunity to obtain release” as required by Graham.[27]
The Supreme Court of Missouri was
quick to distinguish Graham from the
facts Willbanks provided because Graham
only addressed sentencing for a “single
nonhomicide offense.”[28]
Had Willbanks been sentenced to a life sentence without a chance for parole,
then Graham would be applicable.[29]
To strengthen its holding, the Supreme Court of Missouri noted that the
dissenters in Graham explicitly
lamented that “it seems odd that the [Supreme Court] counts only those
juveniles sentenced to life without parole and excludes from its analysis all
juveniles sentenced to lengthy term-of-years sentences (e.g., 70 or 80 years’
imprisonment).”[30]
Lastly, the Supreme Court of
Missouri acknowledged the current circuit split regarding whether Graham applies when a juvenile
nonhomicide offender is sentenced to terms of years (as Willbanks was) rather
than life without parole.[31]
The majority was persuaded by the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth
Circuit’s opinion in Bunch v. Smith, which
held that a juvenile offender’s multiple fixed-term sentences, totaling eighty-nine
years, did not violate the Eighth Amendment.[32]
Without further guidance from the Supreme Court of the United States, the Supreme
Court of Missouri declined to extend Graham
and affirmed the trial court’s finding that Missouri’s mandatory minimum parole
statutes and regulations did not violate Willbanks’ Eighth Amendment rights.[33]
IV. Comment
Willbanks
declined to extend Graham past “the
four corners of its opinion.”[34]
While the Supreme Court of Missouri detailed a lengthy discussion of the circuit
split on the issue of extending Graham
to terms of years, there was no Eighth Circuit guidance to follow.[35]
The Eighth Circuit would be wise to take Willbanks’ inevitable appeal and
settle the issue for the Circuit, but this case could make its way to the Supreme
Court of the United States before resolution.
The Supreme Court of Missouri’s
holding is the law in Missouri. Quoting the Sixth Circuit, the court in Willbanks stated:
At what number of years would the
Eighth Amendment become implicated in the sentencing of a juvenile: twenty,
thirty, forty, fifty, some lesser or greater number? Would gain time be taken
into account? Could the number vary from offender to offender based on race,
gender, socioeconomic class or other criteria? Does the number of crimes
matter? There is language in the Graham
majority opinion that suggests that no matter the number of offenses or victims
or type of crime, a juvenile may not receive a sentence that will cause him to
spend his entire life incarcerated without a chance for rehabilitation, in
which case it would make no logical difference whether the sentence is
"life" or 107 years. Without
any tools to work with, however, we can only apply Graham as it is written.[36]
The Supreme Court of Missouri correctly
wrote the opinion in the mold of the state’s motto: “Show Me” how to extend Graham, or Graham will be read as narrowly as it was written. Prosecutors and
victims of heinous crimes can find comfort in Willbanks, while criminal defendants and their attorneys will have
to wait until the Eighth Circuit or Supreme Court rules for any reprieve.
- Gavin Thomas
[1] Graham v.
Florida, 560 U.S. 48, 82 (2010).
[2] Willbanks v.
State Dep’t of Corr., 522 S.W.3d 238,
239–40 (Mo. 2017) (en banc).
[4] Id.
[5] Id.
[6] Id.
[7] Id.
[8] Id.
[9] Id.
[10] Id.
[12] Id.
[13] Id.
[14] Id.
[15] Id. at 241.
[16] State v.
Honeycutt, 421 S.W.3d 410, 414 (Mo. 2013) (en banc).
[17] Id.
[18] U.S. Const. amend. VIII.
[20] Id. at 58. (internal quotation marks
omitted) (quoting Estelle v. Gamble, 429 U.S. 97, 102 (1976)).
[21] Id. at 82.
[22] Id.
[23] Miller v.
Alabama, 567 U.S. 460, 465 (2012).
[25] Willbanks v.
State Dep’t of Corr., 522 S.W.3d 238, 247 (Mo. 2017) (en banc).
[27] Id. at 240–41.
[28] Id. at 242.
[29] Id. at 243.
[30] Id. (alteration in original) (bold
omitted) (quoting Graham v. Florida, 560 U.S. 48, 113 n.11 (2010) (Thomas, J.,
dissenting)).
[31] Id. at 243–44.
[32] Id. at 244.
[33] Id. at 244–45.
[34] Id. at 246.
[35] Id. at 243–44.
