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Abstract
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On April 11, 2017, five teenage males strolled into a wooded area behind the Central Islip Recreational Center on Long Island, New York.1 They were lured there by two teenage females under the guise of smoking marijuana together. The male teenagers were quickly surrounded by over a dozen young males armed with clubs formed from tree limbs, knives, axes, and machetes. While one of the teens escaped, the other four were beaten, hacked, and stabbed to death. The victims' mutilated bodies were dragged a short dis- tance and left in a pile. The attackers fled, planning to return to bury the bodies. However, the Suffolk County Police Department discovered the victims' bodies before the killers had a chance to return.
All of the attackers were members of the notorious street gang, La Mara Salvatrucha, better known as the MS-13, an extremely violent transnational criminal organization. The event that led to the murders took place a few months earlier when Josue Portillo, one of the attackers, was involved in a verbal altercation at a 7-Eleven convenience store with the sole teenager who managed to escape. Portillo believed that the teenager and his friends were members of the 18th'] Street gang (an MS-13 rival) and that they were falsely representing themselves to be MS-13 members. Portillo reported this to his superiors within the MS-13 and they decided to kill the teens as revenge. Together, they spent months developing a plan to lure the victims to the woods with the assistance of two female asso- ciates of the MS-13. Portillo stayed in contact with the two females...
The majority of MS-13 suspects arrested for murder on Long Island in recent years have been minors. This shocking and tragic phenomenon raises vexing issues for law enforcement, the courts, politicians, educators, and all citizens in communities plagued by gang violence. This Note focuses on a single legal issue: in light of recent Supreme Court cases, beginning with the 2005 landmark ruling in Roper v. Simmons, how should judges impose sentences on persons convicted of committing homicide before their eighteenth birthday? Although we will see that the holdings of the three leading Supreme Court cases addressing this question are reasonably clear, many challenging questions remain for sentencing judges who attempt to faithfully apply these decisions. This Note will explore some of these issues through the prism of MS-13 juvenile-homicide cases, using the sentencing of Josue Portillo for his quadruple murder when he was 15 years-old, as a case study.
This Note proceeds in three parts. Part I sets the stage for studying the Supreme Court's juvenile sentencing jurisprudence. It takes a step back in order to orient the landmark trilogy of cases--Roper, Graham, and Miller--within the broader legal framework of criminal and juvenile justice. It is broken into three subcategories. Subpart (A) briefly explains the principal justifications for punishing criminality. After better understanding why we punish altogether, Subpart (B) analyzes why juveniles should be punished differently from adults. This is explored very briefly from a historical, political, and legal perspective. Subpart (C) explains in what circumstances juveniles in the justice system are treated like adults and why, again from a historical, political, and legal perspective. Part II examines how the Supreme Court limited in some measure the punishments that can be meaded out to juveniles, even if being sentenced within the adult criminal justice system. Roper, Graham, and Miller are explored in detail, as well as some of the preceding cases that paved the road to these landmark rulings, and some subsequent cases. Part III analyzes how judges should implement the guidance given by the Supreme Court in these cases. The analysis will trace Josue Portillo's case but its implications apply across the field of juvenile justice.
Language: en |