Iowa Supreme Court issues latest major ruling on juve sentencing limits and process after Miller

As reported in this local article, the "Iowa Supreme Court on Friday offered guidance to judges for interpreting a 2015 law that lays out sentencing guidelines for juveniles convicted of murder."  Here is more from the press report about the latest in a series of rulings following up on the US Supreme Court's juve sentencing jurisprudence:

Some justices also signaled in concurring opinions that they believe rigid sentences for other crimes committed by juveniles should eventually be rolled back.

The court ruled Friday in a murder case in which Rene Zarate stabbed Jorge Ramos to death in 1999, when Zarate was 15.  Zarate, now 34, originally received a mandatory sentence of life without parole, but requested a resentencing hearing after a 2012 U.S. Supreme Court ruling prohibited such sentences for juveniles.  His new sentence makes him eligible for parole after 25 years, with credit for time served.

Zarate challenged his sentence as well as the constitutionality of a 2015 Iowa law that revised how juveniles who commit first-degree murder are sentenced. Under the law, the sentencing judge could choose from a variety of options including life without the possibility of parole, life with parole after a certain amount of the sentence is served, and life with the immediate possibility of parole.  The law further outlined 25 factors for the court to take into consideration when sentencing juveniles for murder.

In 2016, after that law was passed, the Iowa Supreme Court found that life sentences without parole are unconstitutional for juveniles.  But Friday's ruling was the first time the Iowa Supreme Court addressed the new law. A majority of justices said Friday that the guidelines laid out in the law are constitutional — except for the subsection that allowed for life sentences without parole....

They said judges must give juvenile offenders an individualized hearing taking the circumstances of the case into account, and must consider as mitigating factors things such as the offender's age at the time of the crime, family and home environment and the possibility for rehabilitation and change. But the district court judge who re-sentenced Zarate did so based on his belief that anyone that anyone who takes the life of another individual should spend a certain amount of time in prison, according to the opinion joined by four of the seven justices. "The sentencing judge allowed the nature of Zarate’s offense to taint his analysis by imposing a mandatory minimum sentence of imprisonment due to his belief that there should be a minimum term of imprisonment for anyone who commits murder, regardless of their age at the time of the offense," Justice Bruce Zager wrote in the majority opinion....

The court's remaining three justices issued separate concurrences urging the court to go further in striking down mandatory minimums for juveniles as unconstitutional. Justice Brent Appel, who authored the court's earlier opinion against life sentences without parole for juveniles, said it's time to re-examine the constitutionality of all mandatory minimum sentences for minors who commit crimes. "Instead of imposing mandatory minimums through an unreliable judicial guess, the constitutionally sound approach is to abolish mandatory minimum sentences on children and allow the parole board to make periodic judgments as to whether a child offender has demonstrated maturity and rehabilitation based on an observable track record," Appel wrote in his concurrence.

Justice Daryl Hecht, writing a concurrence joined by Justice David Wiggins, wrote that he believes mandatory minimums for juveniles are categorically prohibited by the Iowa Constitution. "Whether imposed by legislative mandate or by a sentencing court, the constitutional infirmity of mandatory minimum sentences for juvenile offenders is the same in my view," Hecht wrote.

The full opinion in Iowa v. Zarate, No. 15-2203 (Iowa Mar. 9, 2018), which rests much of its constitutional analysis on the Iowa Constitution's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment (rather than the US Constitution's Eighth Amendment), is available at this link.