I arrived at the California Court of Appeal in downtown Los Angeles two hours before
oral argument was scheduled and parked myself at a table in the courthouse cafeteria.
There, I reread my notes on Derrick Wilson's case for the hundredth time.
For the past year, I had worked on Wilson's case as a certified law student with the
Post-Conviction Justice Project, a legal clinic at the University of Southern California
Gould School of Law. The clinic gives students, under the direction of supervising
attorneys, the opportunity to represent state inmates on post-conviction matters:
women serving parolable life sentences, and juveniles sentenced to life without the
possibility of parole.
I was hired to work in the clinic as a summer student after my first year of law school.
It was an ideal fit, offering practical training in litigation while serving underrepresented
people in the community. There are currently 237 juvenile offenders serving life without
parole in California, and Wilson was one of the handful the clinic had selected to
represent. I was excited to take on his case, and to argue his appeal.
But I was nervous, too?not just because it was my first time arguing in a courtroom,
but also because a lot was on the line. Wilson was 17 years old in 1995 when he participated
in a bank robbery in which a teller was fatally shot. Although he was not the shooter,
he was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life without the possibility
of parole?the harshest sentence that can be imposed on a juvenile.
By the time we met, Wilson had already served nearly two decades in prison. Although
he has spent a majority of his life there, he doesn't seem like a hardened criminal:
He speaks softly, thanking us for working on his case. He recounts the first time
he was taken out of juvenile hall and placed in an adult facility, conspicuous in
the orange jumpsuit reserved for juvenile offenders. Some of the older prisoners there
advised him that following prison rules didn't matter because his sentence of life
without parole meant he would never be released.
Placed in a Level IV facility, the highest security level, Wilson has no access to
vocational training or programming. He says he looks forward to nights in the winter
because the sun sets early, and his walks from his cell to the dining hall are the
only chance he gets to see the night sky. His appeal held his chance to see it more
often.
Recently the U.S. Supreme Court in
Miller v. Alabama (132 S. Ct. 2455 (2012)) and the California Supreme Court in
People v. Gutierrez (58 Cal. 4th 1354 (2014)) have ruled that for juvenile offenders, life-without-parole
sentences may only be imposed in the rare occasion their crimes demonstrate "irreparable
corruption." The decisions relied on developments in neuroscience that show juveniles
are "constitutionally different from adults for purposes of sentencing" because their
brains are not fully developed.
The major issues before the court of appeal in Wilson's case were whether his sentence
of life without parole was unconstitutional in light of
Miller, and whether
Miller should be applied retroactively to a decision on habeas review. No published opinion
in California had addressed retroactivity.
Personally, I believed Wilson deserved a second chance?he is no longer a child, but
an adult who expresses remorse. And legally, I was prepared to convince the court
he should be resentenced under
Miller.
When argument began, I grasped the podium and said the words I'd practiced so many
times: "Derrick Wilson is serving an unconstitutional life-without-parole sentence
for a crime he committed when he was 17 years old ... "
In January the court of appeal granted Wilson a resentencing hearing. Then in April
the California Supreme Court agreed to review his case, pending its disposition of
related issues on long adult sentences for juvenile offenders in other cases. (See
In re Wilson pending as No. S224745 (Cal. Sup. Ct.).)
I hope the ultimate decision will change the course of Wilson's life. I know his case
has already changed mine, cementing the desire to pursue a legal career serving the
public interest.
Elizabeth Little is a recent graduate of the University of Southern California Gould
School of Law.
Donna Mallard
Daily Journal Staff Writer
