For decades, courts have struggled with how to sentence people with intellectual disabilities who are convicted of crimes. On Friday, the highest court in Massachusetts, the Supreme Judicial Court, heard oral arguments in a case involving this issue. Daniel Medwed, GBH News legal analyst and Northeastern University law professor, joined host Mary Blake on Morning Edition today to discuss the case and legal precedent. This transcript has been edited for clarity and length.
Mary Blake: Tell us about this case before the SJC. What was the underlying crime and what's the pressing legal issue here?
Daniel Medwed: A man named Da Lin Huang and his wife immigrated from China to the United States back in 1993. They settled in Boston. He worked in a series of Chinese restaurants before a tragic car accident basically aggravated some underlying intellectual disabilities and cognitive impairments. He was rendered unable to work — that caused some marital strife. And in 2001, shortly after his wife announced that she wanted a divorce, she was found dead in their apartment in a brutal fashion. He was right nearby in the apartment, in an alcoholic stupor — a bottle of alcohol right next to him, and some prescription pill bottles, as well. He was deemed to be incompetent to go to trial to face the murder charges. And he wasn't even cleared to go to trial for many years, until 2009, when he did go to trial.
At trial, the defense theory was that because of Huang's mental impairment, he couldn't form the requisite mental state of intent. He couldn't have intended to kill his wife because of his cognitive lack of capacity. That argument didn't prevail. The jury rejected it. They found him guilty. And a judge, citing the cruelty of the homicide, gave him a whopping 'life without the possibility of parole' sentence — it's known as an LWOP sentence.
So one of the key issues in this case, Mary, is whether a judge could do that. May a judge impose an LWOP sentence on an adult with intellectual disabilities?
Blake: Given precedent, does the U.S. Supreme Court let judges impose harsh sentences on defendants when there's evidence of an intellectual disability?
Medwed: The U.S. Supreme Court hasn't seemed to answer this question squarely, but it has set limits around the edges. And here's how it's done it:
In 2002, in a case called Atkins v. Virginia, the Supreme Court abolished the imposition of the death penalty for adults with intellectual disabilities based on the idea that if there are deficits in reasoning, judgment and impulse control, someone's not as morally culpable, and they shouldn't face the ultimate punishment. They shouldn't be subjected to death.
Ten years later, in Miller v. Alabama, a 2012 case, the Supreme Court used similar logic and reasoning to suggest that it's unconstitutional to impose a mandatory LWOP sentence on juveniles — not adults with intellectual disabilities, but juveniles — based on adolescent brain science and the idea that juveniles don't always have the capacity to analyze risk-reward, cost-benefit, and understand the long-term consequences of their actions.
The takeaway from these cases is that the Supreme Court is relatively vigilant when it comes to the imposition of harsh sentences on vulnerable populations. But because it hasn't addressed this particular issue squarely, the Huang defense team is really targeting Massachusetts state constitutional law, not federal constitutional law.
Blake: You just mentioned that the defense is focusing primarily on state laws. So does Massachusetts have its own version of the Eighth Amendment?
Medwed: Yes. Our version, with some modifications, is contained in Article 26 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights. And what's really important here, Mary, is that when you're in state court, you can always ask for the state court judges to give you greater rights — more rights — than the Federal Constitution or the U.S. Supreme Court would allow. I often like to say that the federal constitution is a floor. States can't go beneath it and confer fewer rights on its residents than the Federal Constitution and the U.S. Supreme Court would demand, but there's no ceiling. You can always give greater rights. And the Massachusetts SJC has done so periodically in the past, and I think the Huang defense team is banking on the fact that they might do it again. There's some pretty good arguments here.
Blake: What are those arguments?
Medwed: Well, first, the SJC has indicated in several case precedents that Article 26 is broader than the federal Eighth Amendment.
Second, the plain language of Article 26 uses a disjunctive phrase: It forbids "cruel or unusual punishments," where the federal counterpart uses a conjunctive phrase, it only forbids "cruel and unusual punishment." So, sadly, imposing harsh sentences on people with intellectual disabilities is not unusual, but many of us would think it's cruel. So there might be a lane here to prevail under Massachusetts state constitutional law.
Blake: Fascinating case on both sides here. We'll stay tuned, obviously, and find out what the outcome is.
