Summary
California Supreme Court case to review whether excluding 18- to 25-year-old inmates who were convicted of special circumstances murder and sentenced to life without the possibilility of parole (LWOP) from being eligible to receive a youth offender parole suitability hearing violates the equal protection clause. When Hardin was 25 years old he murdered his elderly neighbor in her apartment. He was convcited of first degree murder with the special circumstance that the murder occured during the commission of a robbery. He was sentenced to LWOP. Despite being statutorily ineligible (Penal Code, § 3051, subd. (h)), Hardin filed a motion for a “Franklin hearing” seeking to develop a record for a future youth offender parole suitability hearing. In his motion, Hardin argued that allowing a parole hearing to inmates sentenced to 25 years to life for first degree murder committed between the ages of 18 and 25 while denying the same hearing to inmates, like him, sentenced to LWOP for first degree special circumstances murder committed between the ages of 18 and 25, violates the equal protection clause. The Court of Appeal agreed with Hardin and held that it was unconstitutional to exclude murderers like him from parole eligibility. CJLF joined the case to argue that parole-eligible young adult murderers are not similarly situated to non-parole-eligible young adult murderers and it was rational for the Legislature to expressly exclude the latter group from receiving a youth offender parole suitability hearing.
The Supreme Court agreed. Hardin and other young adult murderers sentenced to LWOP will remain ineligible for parole.
