Summary
This Pennsylvania Superior Court opinion addresses an appellant's challenge to his forty-five-years-to-life sentence imposed after he was convicted of four counts of first-degree murder as a juvenile. The appellant argued that the sentence constitutes an unconstitutional de facto life sentence under both the Eighth Amendment and Article I, Section 13 of the Pennsylvania Constitution. The court affirmed the lower court's dismissal of his Post Conviction Relief Act petition, concluding that the sentence allows for parole eligibility at age sixty-two and therefore does not constitute a de facto life sentence. Relying on recent state and federal precedent, the court also held that the state constitution's prohibition against cruel punishments is coextensive with the federal Eighth Amendment.
Topics
Practice areas
Questions Presented
- Whether Hernandez's concurrent sentences of forty-five years to life for murders committed when he was seventeen constituted an unconstitutional de facto life sentence under Article I, Section 13 of the Pennsylvania Constitution.
- Whether the sentence was illegal because the sentencing court did not make a finding that Hernandez was permanently incorrigible, irreparably corrupt, or irretrievably depraved.
- Whether the case should be remanded for resentencing.
Holdings
- A sentence of forty-five years to life, making Hernandez eligible for parole at age sixty-two, was not a de facto life sentence.
- For purposes of this challenge, Article I, Section 13 of the Pennsylvania Constitution is coextensive with the Eighth Amendment and does not provide broader protection against the challenged sentence.
- The PCRA court's dismissal was supported by the record and free of legal error, so the order denying PCRA relief was affirmed.
Key quotations
“It logically and necessarily follows that if a discretionary sentencing scheme is constitutionally sufficient to permit the imposition of a life-without-parole sentence on a juvenile homicide offender, so too can a court impose a sentence that is something less than life without parole.” (at 12)
“Further, because Appellant’s sentence does not violate the Eighth Amendment pursuant to Jones and Felder, and we are bound by precedent to apply Article I, Section 13 of the Pennsylvania Constitution coextensively with the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, Appellant is not entitled to relief on his argument that Article I, Section 13 of the Pennsylvania should be interpreted more broadly than the Eighth Amendment.” (at 14)
Factual background
Hernandez was seventeen when his father, stepmother, and two younger brothers were killed in the family apartment in March 1988. The evidence showed that Hernandez moved valuables from the apartment, gave inconsistent explanations about his family's absence, fled after the bodies were discovered, and was arrested in Tennessee, where police found a letter in his automobile stating that he had killed his family. He maintained at trial that he acted in self-defense and under his father's coercion and abuse.
Procedural history
Hernandez was convicted in 1990 of four counts of first-degree murder and possessing an instrument of crime and received consecutive and concurrent life-without-parole sentences. After Miller v. Alabama and Montgomery v. Louisiana, the PCRA court vacated the sentences in 2018 and imposed concurrent terms of forty-five years to life for each murder conviction. This Court affirmed the resentencing judgment, and the Pennsylvania Supreme Court denied further review. Hernandez then filed another PCRA petition in 2023, which the PCRA court dismissed without a hearing; the Superior Court affirmed, although on a different basis.