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NON-PRECEDENTIAL DECISION – SEE SUPERIOR COURT I.O.P 65.37
COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA, : IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF
: PENNSYLVANIA
Appellee :
:
v. :
:
LAMON STREET, :
:
Appellant : No. 952 WDA 2015
Appeal from the Judgment of Sentence, January 21, 2015,
in the Court of Common Pleas of Allegheny County,
Criminal Division, at No(s): CP-02-CR-0011095-2009
BEFORE: FORD ELLIOTT, P.J.E., SHOGAN, and STRASSBURGER,* JJ.
CONCURRING MEMORANDUM BY STRASSBURGER, J.: FILED AUGUST 24, 2016
Given the current state of the law in Pennsylvania regarding juvenile
LWOP, I reluctantly join the Majority’s erudite and well-crafted
Memorandum. This Court in both Commonwealth v. Seagraves, 103 A.3d
839 (Pa. Super. 2014), appeal denied, 116 A.3d 604 (Pa. 2015) and
Commonwealth v. Batts (“Batts III”), 125 A.3d 33, 35 (Pa. Super.
2015), appeal granted in part, 135 A.3d 176 (Pa. 2016), have held that
our review of a challenge to a juvenile LWOP sentence must apply the
deferential abuse of discretion standard. This is unlikely to accomplish the
goal set forth by the United States Supreme Court in Miller v. Alabama,
____ U.S. ____, 132 S.Ct. 2455, 183 L.Ed.2d 407 (2012) of making juvenile
LWOP sentences “uncommon.”
* Retired Senior Judge assigned to the Superior Court.
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Moreover, unless a body of appellate law develops as to how age-
related factors should apply to sentences where LWOP is a possibility, like-
situated juveniles will be treated differently. I have inveighed against such
an outcome in the concurrent-consecutive dichotomy, Commonwealth v.
Zirkle, 107 A.3d 127 (Pa. Super. 2014) (Strassburger, J. concurring), and
the same principle applies here.
As the Majority points out in Footnote 4, our Supreme Court has
granted allowance of appeal in Batts III to determine, inter alia, whether a
heightened standard of review should apply to juvenile LWOP sentences.
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