Hawkins v. N.Y. DOC, 30 N.Y.S. 3d 397 (N.Y. App. Div. 2016) – Defendant (age 16 at time of crime) was convicted of second-degree murder. He was sentenced to a term of 22-years-to-life in prison. Hawkins has been denied parole nine times since becoming eligible for parole in 2000. At the time of his last hearing, he was 54 years-old and had served 36 years of his sentence. One of the reasons for the Board’s denial was that granting Hawkins’ release “would so deprecate the seriousness of [his] offense as to undermine respect for the law.” Hawkins filed an appeal to annul the parole board’s decision. The court agreed with Hawkins that “as a person serving a sentence for a crime committed as a juvenile, [Hawkins] has a substantive constitutional right not to be punished with a life sentence if the crime reflects transient immaturity and that [he] was denied his constitutional right to a meaningful opportunity for release when the Board failed to consider the significance of [his] youth and its attendant circumstances at the time of the commission of the crime.”
The court further reasoned: “The Board, as the entity charged with determining whether [Hawkins] will serve a life sentence, was required to consider the significance of [Hawkins’] youth and its attendant circumstances at the time of the commission of the crime before making a parole determination. That consideration is the minimal procedural requirement necessary to ensure the substantive Eighth Amendment protections set forth in Graham, Miller, and Montgomery.” (internal citations omitted). As the Montgomery Court clarified: “life without parole is an excessive sentence for children whose crimes reflect transient immaturity.” The court reasoned that the U.S. Supreme Court has “given some guidance as to the promise that a parole determination represents.” First, “[t]he Court has clarified that the relevant distinction between a constitutional and unconstitutional life sentence for a juvenile homicide offender—for all but the rare case of an irreparably corrupt juvenile—is that a constitutional sentence guarantees, at some point, a ‘meaningful opportunity to obtain release.’” The court went on: “Although the Court has not specifically reviewed a case regarding a parole determination for a juvenile homicide offender, it is axiomatic that such an offender still has a substantive constitutional right not to be punished with life imprisonment for a crime ‘reflect[ing] transient immaturity.’” (citing Montgomery). “Further, the Court has made abundantly clear that the ‘foundational principle’ of the Eighth Amendment jurisprudence regarding punishment for juveniles is ‘that [the] imposition of a[s]tate’s most severe penalties on juvenile offenders cannot proceed as though they were not children.’” (citing Miller). Thus, “[a] parole board is no more entitled to subject an offender to the penalty of life in prison in contravention of this rule than is a legislature or a sentencing court.” The court reasoned that Miller and Montgomery have determined what a juvenile homicide offender is procedurally entitled to at sentencing. The court noted that “an analogous procedural requirement is necessary at the parole release hearing stage.” This is because, “[f]or those persons convicted of crimes committed as juveniles who, but for a favorable parole determination will be punished by life in prison, the Board must consider youth and its attendant characteristics in relationship to the commission of the crime at issue.” (citing generally to Hayden v. Keller and Greiman v. Hodges). “Here, neither the hearing transcript nor the Board’s written determination reflects that the Board met its constitutional obligation to consider [Hawkins’] youth and its attendant characteristics in relationship to the commission of the crime.”
“Because [Hawkins] was entitled to a meaningful opportunity for release in which his youth, and its attendant characteristics, were considered by the Board, we agree with [the] Supreme Court that [Hawkins] is entitled to a de novo parole release hearing.”