Opinion
CV144006654S
08-30-2017
Timothy Griffin v. Warden, State Prison
UNPUBLISHED OPINION
MEMORANDUM OF DECISION
Samuel J. Sferrazza, S.J.
In 1997, when the petitioner, Timothy Griffin, was fourteen years old, he and another adolescent shot and killed a grocery store owner during a robbery. He was arrested shortly thereafter, and, under General Statutes § 46b-127(a)(1), the juvenile court automatically transferred his case to the adult docket for criminal cases in the Fairfield Judicial District. On April 15, 1999, the petitioner pleaded guilty to felony murder and conspiracy to commit robbery first degree. On June 18, 1999, the court imposed upon the petitioner a total, effective sentence of forty years imprisonment.
In 2004, the petitioner filed his first habeas corpus action and alleged that his guilty pleas were not knowingly, intelligently, or voluntarily entered. The habeas court disagreed, and our Supreme Court affirmed the denial of relief, Griffin v. Commissioner, 292 Conn. 591, 973 A.2d 1271 (2009), per curiam. That adverse decision appeared to end the petitioner's journey through the court system to overturn his convictions and sentences.
However, in 2015, our legislature, through the enactment of P.A. 15-183, raised the age of automatic transfer from juvenile court to adult court from fourteen to fifteen years. See State v. Nathaniel S., 323 Conn. 290, 292-93, 146 A.3d 988 (2016). That case held that the higher age applied retroactively to pending criminal cases. Id., 301. That is, cases pending on the adult, criminal dockets that had been transferred from the juvenile system and involved crimes allegedly committed by fourteen-year-old offenders were removed back to juvenile court for adjudication.
That decision accorded no benefit to the petitioner because his criminal case had concluded sixteen years before the effective date of the amendment to § 46b-127. In dictum, the Supreme Court remarked, " [W]e perceive no absurdity in the fact that retroactive application of [P.A. 15-183] will affect pending cases but not those that already have reached a final judgment." Id., 300. (emphases added). Also, in footnote six, the Supreme Court mentioned the possibility that no return to juvenile court applied to cases in adult court where trial had commenced but had not concluded on the effective date of P.A. 15-183.
The present habeas corpus action raises the issue, by cross motions for summary judgment, of whether the reasoning employed in State v. Santiago, 318 Conn. 1, 122 A.3d 1 (2015), regarding the use of the death penalty in Connecticut, gave birth to a new method of legal analysis by which the petitioner might attack his adult status eighteen years after the disposition of his criminal case. The court rejects that proposition.
In State v. Santiago, supra, our Supreme Court ruled that the legislature's prospective abolition of the death penalty rendered that form of punishment cruel and unusual and, therefore, in violation of Art. I, § § 8 and 9 of the state constitution. Id., 119. The majority opinion in Santiago, supra, reached that conclusion despite the fact that our legislature expressly enacted as part of that new statute a provision specifying that the abolition of the death penalty applied only prospectively. See P.A. 12-5.
By way of analogy, the petitioner argues that the legislative decision to raise the automatic transfer age from fourteen to fifteen years, " reflects a growing understanding in Connecticut and across the nation that children are different; that is, that juvenile offenders--and, especially young adolescents--are less culpable and more capable of reform." Petitioner's Memorandum in Support of Summary Judgment, p. 3. Under this logic, the petitioner's judgment of convictions for felony murder and conspiracy, and the forty-year sentence imposed, are now to be considered cruel and unusual punishment requiring vacatur and remand to the juvenile court system for further adjudication.
The Santiago decision must be viewed as sui generis. The three scathing dissents and disparate concurrences underscore the singularity of the methodology followed by the majority opinion to arrive at its conclusion. The court is unaware of any other Supreme Court decision that construed the legislature's words in one section of a statute to mean the precise opposite of what the legislature stated it meant in another. The occasions when our state constitution mandates such an odd analysis must be rare.
The factual scenario in the Santiago case, supra, is clearly distinguishable from the petitioner's circumstance because that case challenged the continued viability of state-sanctioned killing as a constitutionally acceptable form of punishment in our state. It requires no citation to understand that the death penalty has long been surrounded by legal safeguards unavailable in routine criminal cases. Death is different than lengthy incarceration. Special rules were devised regarding jury selection, the type of evidence that must be allowed in capital cases, the findings that must be made, and the scope of appellate review. Extinguishment of the criminal's life emphasizes the penological concepts of vengeance and social outrage over public safety, isolation, and rehabilitation.
A lengthy prison term is not, per se, cruel and unusual punishment for felony murder, even when the perpetrator committed the crime as a juvenile, as long as the offender's youth is taken into proper account by the sentencing authority and the possibility of parole exists. State v. Delgado, 323 Conn. 801, 810-11, 151 A.3d 345 (2016). Therefore, the petitioner's argument must have at its foundation that the processing of a fifteen-year-old, charged with felony murder, as an adult is constitutional while the same treatment of a fourteen-year-old comprises cruel and unusual punishment because of the enactment of P.A. 15-183.
Under the petitioner's logic, whenever the legislature modifies an age threshold in a statute, related to criminal law or procedure, to a defendant's benefit, the resulting statutory law is irrevocably binding on future legislatures by virtue of the due process protections enshrined in Article I, § § 8 and 9 of our constitution. Fluctuations in our legislature's view of minimum age requirements have never hamstrung the ability to modify statutory law in the future. The legal age for the consumption of alcoholic beverages has varied from twenty-one years, down to eighteen years, and back to twenty-one in recent history. In 1975, the age of consent in Connecticut for sexual activity was sixteen years, former General Statutes § 53a-66(b). In that year, the legislature lowered the age of consent to fifteen, P.A. 75-619, § 4. That amendment not only changed sexual offenses by contracting the pool of potential victims of statutory rape, it also modified what comprised impairment of morals for risk of injury allegations, even though the risk of injury statute retained a sixteen-year age limit State v. Perruccio, 192 Conn. 154, 163, 471 A.2d 632 (1984).
In obvious response to the circumstance of State v. Perruccio, supra, the legislature again amended the age of consent by raising it back to sixteen years. P.A. 85-341. If the petitioner's hypothesis controls, the legislature in 1984 had no power to recriminalize sexual conduct involving fifteen-year-olds, having previously determined in 1975 that such adolescents generally possess the sophistication, maturity, and responsibility to engage in sexual activity. The courts have recognized no such bar.
The court has discussed this example in some detail to illustrate that it is generally regarded as within the province of the legislative branch to make age-related policy determinations such as minimum drinking age, the age of consent, voting eligibility age, and defining the limits of juvenile court jurisdiction. The legislature is better equipped than a court to formulate policy, and judges must honor the separation of powers announced in our constitution which vests the law-making prerogative in the legislature. A court may see the fact pattern of a single case, a mere slice in time, when scrutinizing how the law unfolds; whereas, the legislature has the opportunity to gather large amounts of data, drawn from many segments of society, when contemplating age-related issues, such as when offenders ought to be treated as adults. The legislature also has the freedom to experiment, to revise its collective opinion if warranted, and to return to former positions.
The legislature saw fit to set the age for automatic transfer at fourteen, and there it remained for at least twenty years. The petitioner's argument views the actions of the legislature as a linear march down a ramrod straight highway toward societal perfection. Unlike the death penalty, the public policy regarding the treatment of adolescents who commit serious offenses is more like a pendulum that sometimes favors the specialized attention of the juvenile justice system and at other times feels the need to expose teenagers who commit vicious and deadly acts to the full panoply of the adult criminal justice system. The legislature is free to meander as long as its path stays within constitutional bounds.
If the passage of P.A. 15-183 carried with it the same impact as the abolition of the death penalty, as interpreted by State v. Santiago, supra, one would have expected the Supreme Court to mention that concern in State v. Nathaniel S., supra, rather than observing, albeit in dictum, that fully adjudicated criminal cases need not be resuscitated and remanded to juvenile court for relitigation. Id., 300. The absence of such an observation portends that no such argument is likely to succeed.
As a practical matter, the petitioner's contention would produce absurd results. The automatic transfer for fourteen-year-olds accused of committing the most serious of offenses had existed at least since 1994. The petitioner is now around thirty-five years old. Others within his situation approach middle age. The opportunity to overcome the impulsivity and indiscretion of adolescence and undergo reformation through the assets of the juvenile justice system so as to become a productive member of the community have long ago vanished. Return to the juvenile court for adjudication without the ability to utilize those specialized rehabilitative facilities and programs available in that system appears to be a futile action whose only purpose would be to release the petitioner from confinement. Whatever led the legislature to raise the automatic transfer age from fourteen to fifteen in 2015, it is difficult to conceive that it was the early release of all previously convicted transferees within that class.
For these reasons, the petitioner's motion for summary judgment is denied, and the respondent's motion is granted.