Commonwealth v. Brown

Juvenile Law Center filed an amicus curiae brief in the Massachusetts Supreme Court in support of the motion filed by the Committee for Public Counsel Services on behalf of Marquise Brown, who was sentenced to life without parole as a juvenile. In light of the United States Supreme Court's ruling in Miller v. Alabama banning mandatory life without parole sentences for juveniles, Brown now seeks to have his sentence revisited. 

Under Massachusetts law, any juvenile 14 or older convicted of first degree murder must be sentenced to life without parole. Because this sentencing scheme is now unconstitutional, our brief argues that in the absence of any action from the legislature, the Massachusetts Supreme Court must look to existing statutes to determine what constitutional sentence may be imposed on juveniles convicted of homicide. 

Juvenile Law Center, joined by many other amici, specifically argued that because the only constitutional statutory sentence available in Massachusetts is the sentence for lesser included offenses, the Massachusetts Supreme Court should hold that the appropriate remedy for juveniles convicted of first degree murder is to impose the current statutory sentence for the lesser included offense of manslaughter. 

On December 24, 2013, the Massachusetts Supreme Court held that Miller applies retroactively to those sentenced prior to the Miller ruling and that juvenile life without parole sentences are unconstitutional under the Massachusetts Constitution.