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State v. Green7/30/1998
who will be sentenced to a mandatory life sentence for first-degree sexual offense. The legislature lowered the minimum transfer age from fourteen to thirteen years of age effective 1 May 1994. At that time, the prescribed punishment for first-degree sexual offense was a mandatory term of life imprisonment under the old Fair Sentencing Act. N.C.G.S. § 14-1.1 (1986) (repealed 1994). With implementation of the Structured Sentencing Act, mandatory life imprisonment was abolished for first-degree sexual offense on 1 October 1994. N.C.G.S. § 15A-1340.17 (1997). As a result, there was a four-month "window" of opportunity wherein a thirteen-year-old first-degree sexual offender could potentially face mandatory life imprisonment for conviction. Since defendant was the only thirteen-year-old to commit first-degree sexual offense during this "window," to have his case subsequently transferred to superior court, and to be convicted of the crime, he is the only thirteen-year-old who will be sentenced to a mandatory term of life imprisonment under this statutory scheme as it existed. Defendant contends this result is so unusual that it rises to the level of being unconstitutional. We disagree.
The fact that a particular punishment is "unusual," in the sense that few defendants fall within its purview, is largely irrelevant to our inquiry. As noted above, this Court and the United States Supreme Court traditionally have not afforded separate treatment to the words "cruel" and "unusual," but have looked only to whether a particular punishment involves basic inhuman treatment. In the few cases where punishments have been held unconstitutional due to their apparent "unusualness," the punishments involved treatment so far-removed from accepted forms of punishment in this society that they amounted to basic inhumanity or cruelty. See Rummel, 445 U.S. at 274-75, 63 L. Ed. 2d at 391 (punishment "unique" only if it is a form different from "more traditional forms . . . imposed under the Anglo-Saxon system"); Weems, 217 U.S. at 364-82, 54 L. Ed. at 797-805 (Philippine court sentence of "cadena temporal," hard and painful labor in permanent chains, held cruel and unusual due to unfamiliarity with Anglo-American punishment tradition). Defendant's punishment of ordinary imprisonment in no way approaches such a level.
Defendant makes much of the fact that he is the only thirteen-year-old who will be or was sentenced under the statute that specified mandatory life imprisonment for first-degree sexual offense. However, the fact that defendant is the only criminal to suffer such punishment is nothing more than coincidence. Had two, or two hundred, thirteen-year-olds committed first-degree sexual offenses during the four-month "window" of possible punishment, the law as then written would have applied to all equally. The fact that defendant was the only thirteen-year-old who chose to commit this heinous offense and thereby suffer the otherwise uniform and acceptable punishment prescribed is due to his own timing and nothing more than happenstance. The suggestion that an equally applicable punishment is rendered unconstitutional by virtue of the fact that few choose to commit the crime underlying it, or that only one of many who commit such crime is the one caught and convicted, does not fall within the bounds of any reasonable constitutional discourse.
In Conclusion, defendant's punishment in this case "is severe but is not cruel or unusual in the constitutional sense." Fulcher, 294 N.C. at 525, 243 S.E.2d at 352. Accordingly, this assignment of error is overruled. We conclude that defendant's transfer, trial and sentence were constitutional and free of error. Accordingly, the decision of the Court of Appeals is aff
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