State v O’Dell: Youth and Culpability

In State v O’Dell, the Supreme Court issued a 5-4 decision with potentially far-reaching impact on the way courts sentence teenage offenders for serious felony charges.  Sean O’Dell was convicted of second degree rape of a child for having sexual intercourse with a 12 year-old girl (she testified that it was forcible, he testified that it was consensual) less than two weeks after his 18th birthday.  He was sentenced to a standard range sentence for the offense, 95 months, in spite of his lawyer’s plea that he receive an “exceptional sentence,” meaning a sentence below the standard range.  The Washington Sentencing Reform Act allows judges to sentence below the presumptive standard sentencing range if the offense is atypical from other offenses resulting in the same crime of conviction, such that there are “substantial and compelling reasons” justifying an exceptional sentence.  RCW 9.94A.535.   That statute contains a nonexclusive list of circumstances which could justify an exceptional sentence below the standard range, including that “the defendant’s capacity to appreciate the wrongfulness of his or her conduct, or to conform his or her conduct to the requirements of the law, was significantly impaired.”  O’Dell argued that his youth prevented him from appreciating the wrongfulness of his conduct. The trial court rejected O’Dell’s argument and he appealed.

The Court of Appeals upheld the trial court’s ruling, citing State v. Ha’Mim, where an exceptional sentence below the standard range was given and then overturned because the Court of Appeals held that youthfulness was insufficient to justify an exceptional sentence.   However, the Supreme Court, citing cases since Ha’Mim which recognize recent research on the adolescent brain, revisited the issue and reversed the Court of Appeals.  The Supreme Court held that while youth alone was insufficient to justify an exceptional sentence, the trial court erred in not considering the defendant’s youth, along with specific evidence and arguments regarding the youth’s development, and that future courts should not barred from considering a defendant’s youth when evaluating whether an exceptional sentence is appropriate.