High court upholds long sentence in child rape case
The state Supreme Court on Friday upheld a 91½-year prison term for a man sentenced as a teenager for repeatedly raping a younger relative.
In a case that turned into a test of New Mexico’s laws on sentencing juveniles, Joel Ira had asked the state’s highest-ranking judges to throw out his sentence, arguing it was unconstitutional. He pointed to U.S. Supreme Court decisions banning prison terms that provide no meaningful chance at freedom for juveniles convicted of a crime that does not involve homicide.
But, the court said, with good behavior in prison, Ira would be eligible for parole at the age of 62.
“Certainly the fact that Ira will serve almost 46 years before he is given an opportunity to obtain release is the outer limit of what is constitutionally acceptable,” Justice Edward Chávez wrote for a majority of the court.
If Ira did not have the opportunity to reduce his sentence with good behavior, Chávez said, the court might have viewed the case differently. But as it stood, he said, Ira could not be considered as having a sentence of life without the possibility of parole.
Now 37, Ira was 15 when he was sentenced to prison for sexually abusing the child over the course of about two years, when she was between the ages of 8 and 10.
He had pleaded no contest in 1997 to 13 counts, including 10 counts of first-degree criminal sexual penetration, aggravated battery and intimidation of a witness. He was accused of choking the girl until she passed out and threatening to kill her if she spoke to anyone about the crimes.
Experts told a judge when Ira was sentenced that he had no conscience and that the extensive treatment he would need to be rehabilitated did not exist in New Mexico, according to court documents.
But Gary Mitchell, the lawyer representing Ira, argued studies have shown that men’s brains aren’t fully developed until the age of 25 (slightly younger for women), and that the state cannot give children lengthy sentences without hope that they might someday be released.
Some states have interpreted “life” as not just “biological survival,” the court said, but in terms of what opportunity an inmate might have to truly reenter society and have a meaningful existence outside prison.
The court said, too, that the state Legislature could adopt laws like those in Nevada, which allows a juvenile offender a shot at parole after serving 15 years behind bars if the crime did not include the death of a victim.
Chief Justice Judith Nakamura wrote a separate opinion, joined by Justice Petra Jimenez Maes, that provided graphic details of the repeated torment Ira’s victim suffered at his hands. His case is markedly different from that of a juvenile accused of one impulsive criminal act, she said.
Ira’s case would not fall under U.S. Supreme Court rulings on life without parole for juveniles, Nakamura said, because he was not sentenced to life without parole for a single offense; rather, he received several consecutive sentences for separate crimes.
Mitchell said Friday the court’s opinion was “one of the harshest decisions ever reached by any supreme court in the United States.”
“We’re deciding a child at age 14 can be found to be so reprehensible, we give up on him,” he said.
Mitchell added that he plans to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.