Commonwealth v. LaPlante

482 Mass. 399

123 N.E.3d 759

COMMONWEALTH

v.Daniel J. LAPLANTE.

SJC-12570

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Suffolk..

Argued March 5, 2019.

Decided June 6, 2019.

Merritt Schnipper, for the defendant.

Crystal L. Lyons, Assistant District Attorney, for the Commonwealth.

Benjamin H. Keehn & Afton M. Templin, Committee for Public Counsel Services, for Committee for Public Counsel Services & others, amici curiae, submitted a brief.

Present: Gants, C.J., Lenk, Gaziano, Lowy, Budd, Cypher, & Kafker, JJ.

LOWY, J.

At the age of seventeen, the defendant, Daniel J. LaPlante, murdered a thirty-three year old pregnant mother, Priscilla Gustafson, and her two young children, Abigail and William Gustafson. The issue before us is whether the defendant's sentence of three consecutive terms of life imprisonment, with the possibility of parole after forty-five years, constitutes cruel or unusual punishment in violation of art. 26 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights. Because we conclude that, on the specific facts of this case, the defendant's sentence is within constitutional bounds, we affirm.

Background. 1. Facts. The facts we recite are drawn from the Superior Court judge's sentencing memorandum, which the parties have designated as their statement of agreed facts:¹

"[The defendant] carefully planned [two] intrusions into the Gustafson[s'] home; first breaking in on November 16, 1987, and stealing items. While he could have stopped there, he decided to return. He obtained a gun and lied to his brother's friend in order to get bullets. He practiced loading and unloading the guns. On December 1, 1987, [the defendant] broke into the Gustafson[s'] house for the second time, carrying the loaded weapon. When he heard Priscilla Gustafson and her [five year old] son William entering the house, he said that his first thought was to jump out the window. But he decided not to. He confronted them with the gun, brought them to the bedroom, put William in the closet and tied Priscilla to the bed. [The defendant] said that after he tied Priscilla to the bed, his plan was to leave. But once again he decided not to. Instead, he made the decision to rape her. After raping her, he acknowledged that he could have left. Instead, he decided he would kill her. After he killed Priscilla, [the defendant] made the decision to take William into the bathroom and drown him. As he was leaving, he encountered [seven year old] Abigail. He lured her into the bathroom and made the decision to drown her as well.... After fleeing the scene, [the defendant] went home, ate and then attended his niece's birthday party as if nothing had happened."

2. Sentencing and other posttrial proceedings. In 1988, the defendant was convicted of three counts of murder in the first degree and sentenced to three consecutive terms of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. This court affirmed the convictions after plenary review. Commonwealth v. LaPlante, 416 Mass. 433, 444, 622 N.E.2d 1357 (1993).

In 2012, the United States Supreme Court held that the prohibition on "cruel and unusual punishments" contained in the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution forbids mandatory sentences of life without parole for juvenile offenders.² Miller v. Alabama, 567 U.S. 460, 465, 132 S.Ct. 2455, 183 L.Ed.2d 407 (2012). The following year, this court held that Miller was retroactive to cases on collateral review, and we determined that the protections of art. 26 extend beyond the Eighth Amendment protections outlined in Miller, such that art. 26 prohibits the imposition of life sentences without the possibility for parole -- whether such imposition is mandatory or discretionary -- on juvenile offenders. Diatchenko v. District Attorney for the Suffolk Dist., 466 Mass. 655, 658-659, 1 N.E.3d 270 (2013) ( Diatchenko I ), S.C., 471 Mass. 12, 27 N.E.3d 349 (2015).

In a separate opinion issued the same day as Diatchenko I, we noted that, going forward, the contours of a new sentencing scheme for juvenile homicide offenders would be left to the sound discretion of the Legislature. Commonwealth v. Brown, 466 Mass. 676, 691 n.11, 1 N.E.3d 259 (2013), S.C., 474 Mass. 576, 52 N.E.3d 137 (2016). We emphasized, however, that any constitutional sentencing scheme must "avoid imposing on juvenile defendants any term so lengthy that it could be seen as the functional equivalent of a sentence of life without parole." Id.

Under Diatchenko I, 466 Mass. at 673, 1 N.E.3d 270, the remedy for juvenile homicide offenders such as the defendant, who had been sentenced under statutory provisions since declared unconstitutional, was to leave their life sentences in full force and effect, but to hold that the statutory prohibition on parole eligibility did not apply to them. Consequently, the defendant's three consecutive life sentences were restructured in accordance with applicable statutory provisions and parole regulations, with the result that he would become eligible for parole after serving forty-five years in prison.

The defendant subsequently filed a motion to vacate his sentence. While that motion was pending, this court decided Commonwealth v. Costa, 472 Mass. 139, 149, 33 N.E.3d 412 (2015), in which we held that juvenile defendants who were sentenced to consecutive terms of life imprisonment before our decision in Diatchenko I were entitled to a resentencing hearing at which,

"in addition to the factors considered at any sentencing, the judge should consider (a) the Miller factors; (b) evidence regarding the defendant's psychological state at the time of the offense; and (c) evidence concerning the defendant's postsentencing conduct, whether favorable or unfavorable."³

In light of Costa, the Commonwealth conceded that the defendant was entitled to a resentencing hearing, and the motion judge ordered that the defendant be resentenced.

Following a period for the parties to conduct discovery and to obtain expert evaluations, an evidentiary hearing was held, during which the Commonwealth offered the expert testimony of Dr. Fabian M. Saleh and a number of exhibits were entered in evidence. Based on the evidence presented, after considering traditional sentencing factors as well as the additional factors set forth in Miller and Costa, the sentencing judge reinstated the sentence of three consecutive life terms with parole eligibility after forty-five years.

The defendant filed a "gatekeeper" application with this court pursuant to G. L. c. 278, § 33E, for leave to appeal from the resentencing judge's ruling, as well as a motion for direct entry of the appeal. The single justice directed entry of the appeal on the question "whether a juvenile homicide offender may be required to serve forty-five years in prison before his or her first opportunity to seek release based on rehabilitation." We limit our answer to this question to the specific facts of this case, where the juvenile offender's resentencing occurs when he is well into adulthood and follows a hearing at which evidence is presented regarding the offender's postsentencing conduct and prospects for rehabilitation.

Discussion. The defendant concedes that the Eighth Amendment does not bar the sentence that he received and that the evidence in this case supported the resentencing judge in exercising her discretion to impose the most severe punishment permitted under our State Constitution. Therefore, the sole question before us is whether this defendant's sentence crosses the line drawn by art. 26, which prohibits the imposition of "cruel or unusual punishments."

"Where a defendant claims that a judge has made an error of constitutional dimension, ‘we accept the judge's subsidiary findings of fact absent clear error and leave to the judge the responsibility of determining the weight and credibility to be given ... testimony presented at the motion hearing." Commonwealth v. Perez, 480 Mass. 562, 567-568, 106 N.E.3d 620 (2018) ( Perez II ), quoting Commonwealth v. Villagran, 477 Mass. 711, 713, 81 N.E.3d 310 (2017). However, we "review independently the application of constitutional principles to the facts found." Perez II, supra, quoting Villagran, supra.

The defendant invites this court to announce a bright-line rule, a ceiling that no legislator or sentencing court constitutionally may exceed in setting parole eligibility for a juvenile homicide offender. We decline this invitation. We also decline the Commonwealth's invitation to declare that where each life sentence carries an individually permissible parole eligibility period of fifteen years, the aggregate term to be served before initial parole eligibility is not subject to a proportionality analysis under art. 26. Cf. Commonwealth v. Perez, 477 Mass. 677, 679, 80 N.E.3d 967 (2017) ( Perez I ) (analyzing constitutionality under art. 26 of "aggregate time to be served prior to parole eligibility" of juvenile nonhomicide offender). Instead, the constitutionality of the defendant's sentence, including the aggregate term to be served before parole eligibility, is to be evaluated in light of the particular facts presented.

"To reach the level of cruel and unusual, the punishment must be so disproportionate to the crime that it ‘shocks the conscience and offends fundamental notions of human dignity.’ " Cepulonis v. Commonwealth, 384 Mass. 495, 497, 427 N.E.2d 17 (1981), quoting Commonwealth v. Jackson, 369 Mass. 904, 910, 344 N.E.2d 166 (1976). We make this determination by applying the three-prong disproportionality test set forth in Cepulonis, supra at 497-498, 427 N.E.2d 17. See Perez I, 477 Mass. at 684, 80 N.E.3d 967 (applying Cepulonis disproportionality test in context of juvenile defendant's challenge to constitutionality of his sentence).

The three prongs include (1) an "inquiry into the ‘nature of the offense and the offender in light of the degree of harm to society’ "; (2) "a comparison between the sentence imposed here and punishments prescribed for the commission of more...