Juvenile offenses count toward N.J.’s 3-strike law, Supreme Court finds - nj.com
Crimes committed when someone is a juvenile can count against repeat-offenders under New Jersey’s three-strike law, the state Supreme Court ruled on Monday.
A divided high court upheld a life sentence without parole for a New Jersey man following a series of armed robberies dating back to the 1990s, including two committed while he was a minor.
The man, Samuel Ryan, was convicted of two armed robberies within two days when he was 16 years old. In 1996, when he was 23, he was again convicted of robbing a Bridgeton gas station, shooting a clerk in the process.
The challenge came on the heels of another state Supreme Court ruling that found life sentences without parole for juveniles amounted to cruel and unusual punishment.
But Justice Lee Solomon, writing for the majority, held that the same analysis didn’t apply to Ryan because his most recent offense happened when he was an adult.
Rules prohibiting life sentences for minors, Solomon wrote, “are intended to afford juveniles an opportunity for rehabilitation and ultimate release from incarceration.”
However, the justice wrote, New Jersey’s three strikes law, which was passed in the mid-1990s amid concerns over violent crime, serves an important role of “incapacitating recidivist offenders, who pose a particular danger to society.”
Solomon’s colleagues on the high court, Justices Barry Albin and Fabiana Pierre-Louis, disagreed, assailing the constitutionality of New Jersey’s three strikes law, which takes the possibility of parole off the table if three violent crimes are committed.
“No court has made the discretionary determination that Ryan is totally beyond the pale of redemption and rehabilitation,” Albin wrote in a dissent.
“The Three Strikes Law offends the Federal Constitution because it deprives the court of its discretion to fashion a sentence that does not constitute cruel and unusual punishment,” he added.
The state Attorney General’s Office, which defended Ryan’s conviction before the high court, declined to comment on the decision.
Alison Perrone, a first assistant in the state Public Defender’s Office, which represented Ryan, said the office was “disappointed” with the ruling, which upheld “a sentencing scheme that fails to account for the infirmities of youth and fails to recognize the different levels of culpability for juvenile and adult offenders.”
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source: https://www.nj.com/politics/2022/02/juvenile-offenses-count-toward-njs-3-strike-law-supreme-court-finds.html
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