High court rules for juvenile lifer
Pa. justices cast doubt on sentences without chance of parole
HARRISBURG — Qu’eed Batts, who at age 14 killed another teen in Northampton County, has again won a new sentencing after the state Supreme Court on Monday threw out the life-without-parole prison term he twice received, a ruling celebrated by advocates for juveniles.
The high court ordered Batts to be sentenced for a third time for the 2006 gangland murder he committed, and the justices established heightened safeguards for youth who kill, saying life terms for them must be extremely rare.
In so doing, the high court underscored a string of federal rulings that have revolutionized the way that juveniles who commit the most serious of crimes are treated. Pennsylvania led the nation in the number of juveniles serving life sentences and Monday’s decision will have broad impact as their resentencings move forward.
“We are enormously grateful,” said Marsha Levick, chief counsel of the Juvenile Law Center of Philadelphia and a member of Batts’ legal team.
“I’m on Page 45, and I can’t stop smiling,” Philip Lauer, an Easton defense lawyer who has represented Batts since his arrest, said as he reviewed the ruling.
Batts’ case has run alongside a landmark 2012 U.S. Supreme Court decision that banned automatic life terms for juveniles, finding they are cruel and unusual punishment. But when Batts was sentenced anew in 2014, he again received life without parole, despite the highest court’s instruction that such terms should be uncommon and reserved only for the irreparable.
In handing down a second life term, Northampton County Judge Michael Koury Jr. concluded Batts was one of those rare cases, saying the teen was acting as a “cold-blooded killer,” and not an
impulsive youth.
But in throwing out that sentence, the state Supreme Court found that Judge Koury failed to adequately take Batts’ youth and potential for change into account. When Batts is sentenced a third time, he must be provided “some meaningful opportunity to obtain release based on demonstrated maturity and rehabilitation,” said the decision written by Justice Christine Donohue.
Northampton County First Deputy District Attorney Terence Houck, who prosecuted Batts, said the ruling calls into question whether a life-without-parole term can ever be imposed on a juvenile in Pennsylvania, given the high hurdle the justices placed on it.
“In practical terms, it ends life without parole [for youths], that is my opinion,” Mr. Houck said.
Mr. Lauer agreed, at least for Batts.
“It sounds to me like what they are saying is you can’t return a sentence of life without parole,” Mr. Lauer said.
Batts, now 26, was convicted of first-degree murder in a gang-ordered shooting in which he killed 16year-old Clarence Edwards and wounded 18-year-old Cory Hilario on Feb. 7, 2006, as they scrambled into a home in Easton’s West Ward.
Mr. Houck has long called Batts the poster child for life terms for juveniles, saying he was sophisticated far beyond his years when he killed.
Mr. Houck labeled Monday’s ruling disappointing, though not unexpected given the courts’ embrace of juveniles in recent years.
“It is worrisome because these juvenile offenders are very, very dangerous, and I don’t think there is a full grasp in there of their dangerousness,” he said.
Pennsylvania has roughly 500 once-young killers who received life terms. Batts marks one of a minority to have already receivedhearing, scheduledacross Monday’sthe heightenedstate. whicha in resentencingruling courthousesare establishes beingsafeguards There against mustfor thoselifebe without a presumption hearings.parole, overcomethe that, justices prosecutorssaid. To must prove beyond a reasonable doubt — the highest standard in the law — that the juvenile offender is “permanently incorrigible and thus is unable to be rehabilitated,” the ruling said. The decision delved at length into Batts’ rough background: Born to a 13year-old mother, the boy was shuffled through the foster care system and endured abuse and homelessness. Mr. Lauer said that reality helps explain why Batts got into a gang and ended up where he did. “This was a 14-year-old kid for God’s sake. Immature. Scared,” he said. “It’s just not a life-without-parole decision.”