The Second Department, reversing Supreme Court, determined the parole board did not support the denial of petitioner’s application for release on parole with detailed reasons as required by Executive Law 259-i[2][a][i]. Petitioner was a juvenile at the time of the murders during a robbery attempt. He has been incarcerated for 36 years. He earned college degrees and assumed an leadership role in helping inmates. The Second Department concluded the parole board focused on the nature of the offenses and did not take petitioner’s youth at the time of the offenses, or his accomplishments, into consideration:
“[A] juvenile homicide offender . . . has a substantive constitutional right not to be punished with life imprisonment for a crime reflect[ing] transient immaturity'”… . “[T]he foundational principle’ of the Eighth Amendment jurisprudence regarding punishment for juveniles is that [the] imposition of a [s]tate’s most severe penalties on juvenile offenders cannot proceed as though they were not children'” … . “A parole board is no more entitled to subject an offender to the penalty of life in prison in contravention of this rule than is a legislature or a sentencing court”… . Consequently, “[f]or those persons convicted of crimes committed as juveniles who, but for a favorable parole determination will be punished by life in prison, the [Parole] Board must consider youth and its attendant characteristics in relationship to the commission of the crime at issue” … . …
Neither the transcript of the September 2016 interview nor the Parole Board’s September 2016 determination shows that the Parole Board considered the petitioner’s youth at the time and “its attendant characteristics” in relationship to the crimes he committed. Instead, the record reflects that the Parole Board did not factor in the petitioner’s age at the time and the impact that his age had on his decisions and actions during the commission of these crimes when it decided to deny him parole release based on “the serious nature of the instant offenses.” Matter of Rivera v Stanford, 2019 NY Slip Op 03601, Second Dept 5-8-19