Clay County resident Joey Chandler was only 17 when he committed the murder that would land him in prison for life.
In 2005, two years after his arrest in Clay County, Chandler was convicted of the murder of his cousin, Emmitt Chandler. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Two years ago, Clay County Circuit Judge Jim Kitchens upheld the sentence.
But that was before a United States Supreme Court decision setting a new standard for sentencing teenagers, said Erin Briggs, an attorney with the State Public Defenders Office, who has filed an appeal of Kitchens’ decision on behalf of Chandler with the Mississippi Supreme Court.
Chandler’s appeal is pending, along with dozens of other cases of juvenile offenders. Chandler is one of 87 offenders whose cases were taken back up for resentencing for crimes committed prior to the U.S. Supreme Court decision ruling that minors shouldn’t be sentenced to life in prison without parole — or at least that life without parole should be reserved for rare cases in which a juvenile demonstrates “permanent incorrigibility,” Briggs said, quoting the decision.
“Our argument is that when you’re dealing with juveniles, they are different than adults,” Briggs said. “And the default has to be that you sentence them to life with the possibility of parole unless you find that they are one of the rare kids who are irreparably corrupt, one of the rare juveniles that cannot be rehabilitated.”
The U.S. Supreme Court
Briggs said the Supreme Court started taking up cases related to sentencing for juveniles back in 2005 when it ruled trial courts could no longer sentence minors convicted of crimes to the death penalty. Five years later, in Graham v. Florida, the Supreme Court ruled juveniles who weren’t the actual shooters in murder cases could not be sentenced to life without parole.
It wasn’t until Miller v. Alabama in 2012 that the court declared life without parole unconstitutional for juveniles across the board.
The court’s new reasoning in these cases, backed by research from the American Psychiatric Association, was that parts of the brain regulating impulse control and consideration for the future are not fully developed in teenagers — they’re not even fully developed in college age adults, Briggs said. Teenagers are also more vulnerable to things like peer pressure.
“There are a lot of reasons why (juveniles) commit crimes other than them just being bad kids,” Briggs said. “…It’s not to say they should not be punished. They should be punished. But they should not receive a punishment that’s going to be a permanent solution to what might be a temporary problem or a temporary behavior.”
Juveniles in the justice system
It was reasoning backed by local attorney Carrie Jourdan, who has defended juveniles in adult court before.
“They’re hanging their hat on the eighth amendment,” Jourdan said of the Supreme Court.
In other words, she said, the Supreme Court decided sentencing teenagers to life in prison without the possibility of parole constituted cruel and unusual punishment and determined children should get different sentencing criteria than adults.
And in Mississippi, that could affect children who committed crimes when they were as young as 13, District Attorney Scott Colom said. Offenders 13 and older who are convicted of crimes that carry up to life in prison as a penalty — crimes like murder, sexual battery, kidnapping and armed robbery — can all be tried as adults. Those cases, Colom said, start in circuit court and the judges and attorneys have the option to turn it over to youth courts.
Colom thinks the Legislature probably wrote the law that way to come down hard on violent crimes.
“They want to protect the public from these violent crimes and discourage them,” he said.
And Mississippi judges are notoriously tough on offenders who commit violent crimes, no matter how young they are, Jourdan said.
“The judiciary has shown very little tendency toward leniency,” she said.
Still, she said, it’s not realistic to expect someone between the ages of 13 and 18 to have the same level of understanding of their actions as an experienced adult.
Jourdan, Briggs and Colom all noted, too, that just because an offender goes before a parole board doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll get parole.
“People think we’re arguing, ‘Oh, just let these people out of (prison),'” Briggs said. “And that’s not what we’re arguing. We’re just saying give the opportunity to get parole.”
Jourdan: More steps needed
Jourdan added the U.S. Supreme Court’s decisions are steps in the right direction, but she thinks treating teenagers differently than adults in the justice system should start before sentencing.
“What’s more important is that they be treated differently in the arrest phase,” she said.
Right now in Mississippi, children as young as 13 or 14 have to invoke their rights to remain silent or to speak with an attorney — their parents can’t do it for them, Jourdan said. Their parents don’t even have the right to be there while police question them. And before convictions, when the teenagers go to jail, they’re in the jail with adults.
“Without any protections, it is ripe for abuse and miscarriages of justice,” Jourdan said. “So I think it is even more critical to represent juvenile offenders on the front end.”
When juveniles are treated as juveniles and not adults, there is always the possibility of rehabilitation, said Naomi Smoot, executive director of the Coalition for Juvenile Justice, a national nonprofit organization that promotes keeping juvenile offenders out of the adult justice system.
“Rehabilitation … has always been the goal of the juvenile justice system since its creation,” Smoot said.
Putting juveniles in community-based rehab programs is actually cheaper for taxpayers and decreases the likelihood juveniles will be physically or sexually assaulted by adult offenders while also decreasing the possibility the juveniles will commit crimes later in life.
“Young people are not just miniature adults,” Smoot said. “They are not yet fully developed and they have different needs as a result of that.”
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 34 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
