Fourth Circuit affirms ruling that DC sniper Lee Malvo entitled to resentencing due to Miller and Montgomery
Last year, as reported in this prior post, a US District Judge concluded that infamous sniper Lee Boyd Malvo was entitled to re-sentencing as a consequence of Supreme Court rulings precluding mandatory life sentences for juvenile murderers. Yesterday, the Fourth Circuit affirmed that decision in a unanimous panel ruling in Malvo v. Mathena, No. 17-6746 (4th Cir. June 21, 2018) (available here). This ruling gets started this way:
In Virginia in 2004, a defendant convicted of capital murder, who was at least 16 years old at the time of his crime, would be punished by either death or life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, unless the judge suspended his sentence. After a Virginia jury convicted Lee Boyd Malvo of two counts of capital murder based on homicides that he committed in 2002 when he was 17 years old, it declined to recommend the death penalty, and he was instead sentenced in 2004 to two terms of life imprisonment without parole, in accordance with Virginia law. Thereafter, Malvo, again seeking to avoid the death penalty, pleaded guilty in another Virginia jurisdiction to one count of capital murder and one count of attempted capital murder — both of which he also committed when 17 years old — and received two additional terms of life imprisonment without parole.
After Malvo was sentenced in those cases, the Supreme Court issued a series of decisions relating to the sentencing of defendants who committed serious crimes when under the age of 18. It held that such defendants cannot be sentenced to death; that they cannot be sentenced to life imprisonment without parole unless they committed a homicide offense that reflected their permanent incorrigibility; and that these rules relating to juvenile sentencing are to be applied retroactively, meaning that sentences that were legal when imposed must be vacated if they were imposed in violation of the Court’s new rules. See Roper v. Simmons, 543 U.S. 551 (2005); Graham v. Florida, 560 U.S. 48 (2010); Miller v. Alabama, 567 U.S. 460 (2012); Montgomery v. Louisiana, 136 S. Ct. 718 (2016).
In these habeas cases filed under 28 U.S.C. § 2254, we conclude that even though Malvo’s life-without-parole sentences were fully legal when imposed, they must now be vacated because the retroactive constitutional rules for sentencing juveniles adopted subsequent to Malvo’s sentencings were not satisfied during his sentencings. Accordingly, we affirm the district court’s order vacating Malvo’s four terms of life imprisonment without parole and remanding for resentencing to determine (1) whether Malvo qualifies as one of the rare juvenile offenders who may, consistent with the Eighth Amendment, be sentenced to life without the possibility of parole because his “crimes reflect permanent incorrigibility” or (2) whether those crimes instead “reflect the transient immaturity of youth,” in which case he must receive a sentence short of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Montgomery, 136 S. Ct. at 734.
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