THE SUPREME JUDICIAL COURT declared it unconstitutional to sentence anyone under the age of 21 to life without the possibility of parole, citing brain development science and “contemporary standards of decency.” 

The closely-watched 4-3 ruling, released Thursday morning, extended protections that have been in place for the better part of a decade for juveniles to slighter older “emerging adults.” It makes Massachusetts the first state in the nation to categorically reject life without parole for young adults, and comes through a sharply divided ruling by a court often known for its unanimous decisions.

“Supreme Court precedent, as well as our own, dictates that youthful characteristics must be considered in sentencing, that the brains of emerging adults are not fully developed and are more similar to those of juveniles than older adults, and that our contemporary standards of decency in the Commonwealth and elsewhere disfavor imposing the Commonwealth’s harshest sentence on this cohort,” Chief Justice Kimberly Budd wrote for the majority in Commonwealth v. Sheldon Mattis. 

In considering the case of Sheldon Mattis, who was given a mandatory life sentence with no possibility of parole for first degree murder at the age of 18, “we must recognize the ‘unique characteristics’ of emerging adults that render them ‘constitutionally different’ from adults for purposes of sentencing,” Budd wrote.

The SJC went further than an earlier Superior Court ruling that determined mandatory life sentences without parole are unconstitutional for those under 21, deciding that even giving judges the option to sentence these young adults to life without parole would be similarly unacceptable. The decision will impact 18- to 20-year-olds serving mandatory life sentences for first degree murder, who will now become eligible to apply for parole. 

“The decision of the SJC is carefully considered, courageous, and correct,” one of Mattis’s attorneys, Ruth Greenberg, said. After more than 10 years, the result is “a long time coming,” she said.

Mattis was convicted in 2013 of first degree murder for his part in the death of 16-year-old Jaivon Blake. Mattis handed a gun to a friend, Nyasani Watt, who fatally shot Blake and wounded Kimoni Elliott on a Dorchester street. Though both Mattis and Watt were convicted of first-degree murder, 18-year-old Mattis was sentenced to mandatory life without parole while Watt would be eligible for parole after 15 years because he was less than two weeks shy of his 18th birthday at the time of the shootings.

Mattis’s lawyers argued that life without parole for the 18-year-old violated Article 26 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights as well as the Eighth Amendment to the US Constitution, qualifying as cruel and unusual punishment.

In considering the first degree murder, and troubled by the disparate charges between the 17- and 18-year-old, the SJC justices in 2020 sent the case back the Superior Court for further “development of the record with regard to research on brain development after the age of seventeen,” to inform their decision about the constitutionality of life sentences without parole for young adults.

“Advancements in scientific research have confirmed what many know well through experience: the brains of emerging adults are not fully mature. Specifically, the scientific record strongly supports the contention that emerging adults have the same core neurological characteristics as juveniles have,” Budd wrote in the new decision.

The science presented shows emerging adults, like juveniles, have a lack of impulse control, are more prone to risk taking, and more susceptible to peer pressure than those over 21, and have a greater capacity for change than their older peers.

“If there’s one thing that’s important, it’s that this isn’t one field of study that we’re relying on,” Ryan Schiff, one of Mattis’s attorneys, told the court in March. “Instead, there’s a convergence of evidence from multiple scientific disciplines and … most importantly real world data. We look at real world data for crime statistics, and also other kinds of risky behaviors in late adolescents, and what we see is that the stuff that we would expect to see from the laboratory studies actually is true in the real world.”

Suffolk County District Attorney Kevin Hayden said his office has identified approximately 70 inmates who will eventually become eligible for parole as a result of the ruling. The decision does not automatically release convicted murderers or make them eligible for parole early, Hayden and the court note, but allows them to petition the parole board, which will make determinations on dangerousness and rehabilitation.

“We know this decision will generate questions among the survivors of homicide victims of both the immediate and distant past, and we want to make sure that those survivors get accurate information about the ruling,” Hayden said, encouraging survivors and families to access service through the DA’s office. “Our victim witness advocates will help these families and loved ones understand how the SJC decision affects them,” Hayden said.  

Budd wrote for a majority that included concurring justices Scott Kafker, Dalila Wendlandt, and Frank Gaziano.

Proponents of removing life sentences without parole from those under 21 argue that Massachusetts has lagged science and much of the country in reconsidering this sentencing regime. Massachusetts, Budd noted in her opinion, is one of only 10 states that currently require 18- to 20-year olds who are convicted of murder in the first degree to be sentenced to life without parole.

The sources presented to the court “confirm what any parent of adult children can tell you: a child does not go to bed on the eve of her eighteenth birthday and awaken characterized by a lessened ‘transient rashness, proclivity for risk, and inability to assess consequences,’” Wendlandt wrote. 

Transitioning to adulthood is a fluid process, she wrote, and “in the ways that matter for the Commonwealth’s harshest punishment, young adults of the ages of eighteen, nineteen, and twenty share key characteristics with their under-eighteen year old peers; they ‘have diminished culpability and greater prospects for reform’ than older adults and ‘are less deserving of the most severe punishments.’”

Justices David Lowy, Serge Georges, and Elspeth Cypher dissented from the ruling, asserting that the punishment of life without parole for first degree murder committed by a legal adult does not constitute cruel and unusual punishment such that the Legislature should not be able to mandate it as a sentence. Beyond that, the dissenters wrote, the courts should defer to the Legislature in defining the right punishment for criminal behavior and the age ranges that should be subject to it.

“I cannot say that society, through its elected officials, may not express its revulsion of the crime of murder in the first degree by imposing a punishment of life without the possibility of parole on adults without offending our Declaration of Rights,” Lowy wrote.

The Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office prosecuted the case, with attorneys during current DA Hayden’s tenure arguing for the constitutionality of life sentences without parole at a judge’s discretion if an offender is “irretrievably depraved.” 

Not all prosecutors marched in lockstep. While Essex District Attorney Jonathan Blodgett submitted a brief arguing that mandatory life sentences without parole are constitutional, district attorneys for the Northwestern District, covering Hampshire and Franklin counties, and Berkshire County submitted a letter to the court arguing that the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights precludes mandatory life without parole for 18-, 19-, and 20-year-olds.

Filings from the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office during former DA Rachael Rollins’s tenure noted that she “supports legislation that contemplates the expansion of the statutory sentencing scheme for juveniles convicted of murder to include emerging adults,” but argued that the legislative process would be the correct forum for such a reconsideration. 

Though he “wholeheartedly” agrees that the courts should offer great deference to the Legislature, Kafker said an earlier ruling striking down life without parole for those under 18 years old was able to do so without drawing lines between juvenile and adult offenders. “In sum,” he wrote, “we did not defer to the Legislature; we concluded that it acted unconstitutionally” in establishing life without parole for juvenile offenders. 

The new ruling is consistent with legislative action, Kafker wrote, since recent laws already treat those under 21 differently in some criminal justice contexts. Lawmakers authorized the Department of Youth Services to maintain custody of youthful offenders up to age 21, he noted, and the Massachusetts Sentencing Guidelines instruct judges to consider the developmental characteristics of 18- through 20-year-olds, even when they have been tried as adults. 

Attorney General Andrea Campbell – who testified last fall in support of legislation to raise the age of juvenile court jurisdiction to include 18-, 19-, and 20-year-olds over the course of five years – cheered the decision, saying in a statement that it “underscores the importance of our legal system acknowledging the ongoing brain development of young people in order to improve public safety, reduce recidivism and deliver justice.”

The current sentencing regime allows juveniles the opportunity for parole after 25 to 30 years for first degree murder committed with “deliberate premeditation” and after 30 years if the murder was committed with “extreme atrocity or cruelty.” Mattis and others who were convicted before the Legislature adopted new parole rules for youthful offenders in 2014, Budd wrote, will be eligible after 15 years.

“Law, science and justice prevailed today,” said Anthony Benedetti, chief counsel at the Committee for Public Counsel Services, the state agency overseeing legal defense for indigent defendants, in a statement after the ruling. The decision “shows that ours is a legal system that believes in rehabilitation, not simply in applying draconian, die-in-prison punishments to young, vulnerable people. It is a system that recognizes that brains of late adolescents are not fully developed, and that young people who offend are not beyond redemption.” 

For Greenberg, who has represented Mattis since his original trial a decade ago, the decision “is a beacon to the states.” Massachusetts planted a flag, she said. “It’s very hard to be the first state. It will be easy to be the second.”