The Appellate Division concluded with the following in relevant part: Miller and Zuber are intended to afford juveniles an opportunity for rehabilitation and ultimate release from incarceration. See Miller, 567 U.S. at 479, (finding that “children’s heightened capacity for change” necessarily limits the “appropriate occasions for sentencing juveniles to” life without parole); Zuber, (noting that “it is difficult at an early age to differentiate between the immature offender who may reform and the juvenile who is irreparably corrupt”). Thus, Miller and Zuber are uniquely concerned with the sentencing of juvenile offenders to lifetime imprisonment or its functional equivalent without the possibility of parole.
The Court further noted: “The Legislature has chosen eighteen as the threshold age for adulthood in criminal sentencing. Although this choice may seem arbitrary, ‘a line must be drawn,’ and ‘the age of 18 is the point where society draws the line for many purposes between childhood and adulthood.'” Id. at 600 n.10 (2022) (first alteration in original) (quoting Roper, 543 U.S. at 574); see also Graham, 560 U.S. at 74-75; N.J.S.A. 2A:4A-22(a) (defining a juvenile as an individual “under the age of 18 years”); N.J.S.A. 2A:4A-22(b) (defining an adult as “an individual 18 years of age or older”).
Moreover, our institutional role as an intermediate appellate court is a limited one. We are bound to follow the precedents of the United States Supreme Court and the Supreme Court of New Jersey, regardless of whether those precedents might seem outmoded. See, e.g., State v. Carrero App. Div. 2012) (declining the defendant’s request that we reconsider the Supreme Court’s holding on the admissibility of Alcotest results); State v. Breitweiser (App. Div. 2004) (recognizing that, as an intermediate appellate court, we are bound by the Supreme Court’s holdings and dicta).
Nor are we persuaded by the out-of-state authority cited by defendants. In those cases, the defendants were serving life without parole. That is not the case here. We note, however, in Mattis, the Massachusetts Supreme Court – not an appellate court – remanded for the trial court to conduct a hearing regarding research on brain development after the age of seventeen.
We conclude defendants’ sentences were authorized by the Criminal Code and were not disturbed on direct appeal or collateral attack. They remain legal sentences. We therefore discern no reason to disturb the motion judges’ decisions, which emphasized the Supreme Court in Comer limited its decision to juveniles.
The Appellate panel held that it is bound by Supreme Court dicta. Dicta, by definition, is a non-binding comment.
