Joseph Wang v. United States of America

Petitioner Wang, who was sentenced to life without parole as a juvenile in federal court in New York, seeks to have his sentence revisited in light of the United States Supreme Court’s ruling in Miller v. Alabama, which banned mandatory life without parole sentences for juveniles. Wang had already filed federal habeas petitions before Miller was decided. Juvenile Law Center filed an amicus brief in support of the Motion to File a Second or Successive Petition Pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2244(b), filed by private attorneys from Jenner & Block, on behalf of Petitioner Wang.

Juvenile Law Center’s brief argued that Wang is entitled to relief based on the second exception to the prohibition on filing a second or successive habeas petition, which allows a subsequent petition when it is premised on “a new rule of constitutional law, made retroactive to cases on collateral review by the Supreme Court, that was previously unavailable.” 28 U.S.C. § 2255.

Juvenile Law Center specifically argued that first, the Court unambiguously resolved this question when it granted relief to Kuntrell Jackson, petitioner in Jackson v. Hobbs; that second, Miller announced a substantive rule, which is consistent with the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Eighth Amendment in light of its evolving understanding and appreciation of the significance of child and adolescent development; that third, because the Miller Court found a violation of the Eighth Amendment, the rule announced necessarily must provide retroactive relief, as categorically, any Eighth Amendment decision barring a particular sentence must be retroactive.

Finally, our brief argued that even assuming the rule is procedural, Miller is a “watershed rule of criminal procedure” under Teague v. Lane, 489 U.S. 288, 300 (1989). For each of these reasons, and as this Court and others have already found, the holding in Miller applies retroactively to inmates, such as Petitioner, serving mandatory life without parole sentences for crimes committed as juveniles, and who have exhausted both direct and collateral appeal rights and seek to file a successive petition pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2244(b).

On July 16, the Second Circuit granted Wang's pro se motion to file a successive habeas petition in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York.