MISSOURI — A federal appeals court has upheld the district court’s ruling that the Missouri Parole Board’s parole review process for youthful offenders originally sentenced to life without parole is unconstitutional.

The opinion comes as the result of a long-fought class action lawsuit, Brown v. Precythe, filed by the MacArthur Justice Center and co-counsel Husch Blackwell, which targeted the Parole Board’s demonstrated abuse of power, disregard for due process, and failure to comply with state and federal law requiring that youthful offenders serving mandatory life without parole (LWOP) sentences be provided a meaningful opportunity for release based upon demonstrated maturity and rehabilitation.

“The State insisted it could run this class of youthful offenders through its standard parole review process–a process that is arbitrary, unfair, and opaque. But this passing consideration isn’t enough,” said Amy Breihan, Co-Director of the MacArthur Justice Center’s Missouri office. “The Eighth Circuit has now reiterated what the Supreme Court held time and again: juvenile offenders must be given a meaningful opportunity for release, and that consideration for release must be focused on their maturity and rehabilitation over time.”

In 2012, the Supreme Court banned mandatory life without parole sentences for children based on its recognition that youth are inherently less culpable and more capable of rehabilitation. Missouri was one of several states that had been sentencing teens to die behind bars without any individualized consideration of their youth or ability to be rehabilitated. In the wake of the Court’s decision, instead of resentencing the nearly 100 prisoners serving this now unconstitutional sentence, Missouri chose to make them eligible for parole after serving 25 years in prison.

The Missouri Parole Board, however, denied parole to almost all who had hearings and provided only boilerplate explanations usually based on the circumstances of the offense.. Hearings were short, often less half an hour, and focused largely on the crime. Most glaringly, in direct contravention of Miller, the Board failed to consider the prisoners’ youth at the time of the crime when denying parole.

In October 2017, a class action was filed by four men sentenced to mandatory life as children, who had been deprived a reasonable chance at parole. A year later, the district court granted summary judgment in favor of a JLWOP class, ruling that the Missouri Department of Corrections practices were unconstitutional. The new appellate ruling agrees with the district court that the policies and practices of the Parole Board Board were cruel and arbitrary and  deprived class members of their Eighth Amendment rights.

Following the ruling, the district court ordered Missouri to implement a 23-part plan to overhaul the Missouri Parole Board processes for individuals serving juvenile LWOP sentences. The reforms enable prisoners to more effectively participate in hearings, including requiring full access to the records in their parole files; the right to bring multiple witnesses to a parole hearing, including an expert witness; the right to be represented by counsel at a critical pre-hearing interview; and, if represented, the right for your attorney to meaningfully advocate at the parole hearing. The Board also must document reasons for their parole decision, and the evidence relied upon in reaching their decision.

When the Supreme Court banned these extreme sentences, there were roughly 100 men and women who had been sent to die behind bars as children. Since the district court’s decision, JLWOP parole hearings look much different. The Board asks probing questions about the prisoner’s life and mindset at the time of the crime, and they hear mitigating evidence from witnesses and counsel. “The resulting decisions prove that when the process meaningfully accounts for youth and subsequent growth, it becomes clear that many are ready for release,” said Renee Warden, Juvenile Parole Fellow at the MacArthur Justice Center. “So far, 17 individuals have been released. Dozens still await their chance at freedom. But the Eighth Circuit’s decision ensures that they will have a meaningful chance.”

A central tenet of the court-mandated plan prohibited the Board from using assessment tools unless specifically tailored to the state’s youthful offender class. Risk assessment tools are designed to assess adult offenders’ risk, and they inherently hold youth at the time of the offense against prisoners because, for example, prisoners incarcerated since youth will not have an employment or marriage history. The appellate court agreed with the JLWOP class, and the district court’s decision, that Missouri’s risk assessment tool cannot fairly be applied to the JLWOP class because “it intrinsically disfavors juvenile offenders because of their youth.”e.

“What we see now that DOC is using a youth-specific risk assessment tool rather than the ORAS, is that the vast majority of Brown class members are scored as the lowest risk to reoffend,” said Breihan. “This is not surprising. It confirms what we find in broader statistics around this population of returning residents, and what we know personally from working with these remarkable clients in their nearly decade-long fight for justice.”

In their own cross-appeal, the JLWOP class objected to the district court’s earlier ruling that class members were not eligible for state-funded counsel. The decision held their reasoning was “insufficient” and remanded it back to the district court for further proceedings.

“Counsel is critical to ensuring the JLWOP class’s constitutional rights are protected,” said Megan Crane, Co-Director of MacArthur Justice Center’s Missouri office. “It is a farce to pretend that a prisoner, incarcerated since youth without access to records and without resources,, can readily marshall the evidence required for an adequate presentation of why their youth matters to the Board. Our clients’ liberty is on the line and, without counsel, the due process right recognized by the Court risks ringing hollow.”

This is not the only effort by the MacArthur Justice Center to instill accountability on the Missouri Parole Board. In 2017, the Parole Board that previously came under fire for misconduct when it came to light that parole staff were using hearings to play word games at inmates’ expense. The organization also won a second-class action lawsuit against the parole board for its unconstitutional parole revocation practices. That lawsuit, Gasca v. Precythe, resulted in an injunctive order requiring significant changes to the Parole Board’s practices when sending someone on parole supervision back to prison, including the requirement that they provide state-funded counsel to eligible parolees. After conceding liability, the State has appealed that decision, which is currently pending before the Eighth Circuit.

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The Roderick & Solange MacArthur Justice Center is a national, nonprofit legal organization dedicated to protecting civil rights and fighting injustice in the criminal legal system through litigation at the trial, appellate, and Supreme Court levels. www.macarthurjustice.org