Illinois Court Grants Leave to File Successive Postconviction Petition for Defendant Sentenced to De Facto Life Sentence for Crimes Committed at Age 19
Recent Cases in Law and Neuroscience, Curated by the Center for Law, Brain & Behavior and the Shen Neurolaw Lab with support from the Dana Foundation
On December 15, 2020, an Illinois state appellate court reversed a lower court’s denial of Lester Dobbey’s petition for leave to file a successive postconviction petition. Dobbey had been sentenced to a de facto life sentence for crimes he committed when he was 19 years old.
In 2000, Dobbey was charged with first-degree murder for the shooting of three victims, resulting in one death. He was sentenced to 51 years in prison.
In 2017 and 2018, Dobbey filed several supplements to his second postconviction petition, arguing that his sentence violated the Illinois Constitution’s proportionate penalties clause and the U.S. Constitution’s Eighth Amendment because the trial court did not consider any mitigating factors during sentencing. Dobbey attached “numerous articles on juvenile and adolescent brain research,” testimonies and memoranda from adolescent brain experts, and recent Illinois court decisions regarding the extension of Miller v. Alabama to young adults. The trial court dismissed the petition, and Dobbey appealed.
On appeal, Dobbey argued that “the legal and community standards pertaining to sentencing of young adults have dramatically changed since his original sentencing hearing in 2002 and his resentencing in 2005” and that “recent holdings by our supreme court suggest that the laws regarding juveniles should be extended to young adults such as himself.” He acknowledged that he was older than 18 years old at the time of the crime but contended that “recent developments in neuroscience research establish that emerging adults share more salient characteristics with juveniles than adults,” leading to the extension of these principles to young adults.
The appeals court reversed the trial court. In doing so, the appellate court rejected Dobbey’s Eighth Amendment argument but agreed with his argument about the Illinois proportionate penalty clause. In reaching its conclusion, the opinion cited People v. Carrion, 2020 IL App (1st) 171001, stating that it is “clear that the categorical findings made by Miller and its progeny under the federal eighth amendment apply only to juveniles.”
However, looking to cases such as People v. Thompson, 2015 IL 118151 and People v. Harris, 2018 IL 121932, the court suggested that “offenders who were 18 years or older when they committed the crimes, should pursue as-applied proportionate penalties challenges by means of postconviction proceedings.” Wading into a split among Illinois appellate courts over “how as-applied proportionate penalties challenges to sentences imposed on young adult offenders should be treated in the context of successive postconviction petitions[,]” the court found that “taking into account the petitioner’s present allegations of poverty, parental and drug abuse, a harsh life on the streets, and gang involvement beginning at age 13, we believe that the dismissal of the as-applied proportionate penalties claim at this early juncture in the postconviction proceedings is premature.”
The opinion also noted that the law is trending towards increased protections for young adults, specifically noting that “our legislature has recently changed the law to make a defendant convicted of first-degree murder eligible for parole after serving only 20 years, if the defendant was under 21 years old at the time when he committed the crime, and was sentenced after the law took effect on June 1, 2019.” Nevertheless, that law does not apply to Dobbey’s case, the court noted, as the law has not been made retroactive.
One judge dissented, arguing that Dobbey’s “51-year sentence in no way shocked the moral sense of the community or was cruel or degrading” as Dobbey was “legally an adult at age 19” and was the principal offender of a violent crime. The dissenting judge stated that “I believe the court was able to consider the relevant Miller factors of defendant’s age of 19 (adulthood), his particular immaturity, impulsivity, and failure to appreciate risks and consequences.”
Key words: Illinois, Miller v. Alabama, LWOP, de facto life sentence, adolescent brain, young adult
Citation: People v. Dobbey, 2020 IL App (1st) 190118-U
This post is the 41st post as part of an ongoing Center for Law, Brain & Behavior (CLBB) series tracking the latest developments in law and neuroscience cases. To see previous posts about recent cases, see the full case archive on the CLBB website. To see updates on legal scholarship, see the Neurolaw News, hosted by the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Law and Neuroscience. This project is made possible through support of the Dana Foundation.
