A Toppenish man's bid to be resentenced for a murder he committed when he was 17 was denied by the Washington state Supreme Court.
In a 7-2 ruling issued Wednesday, the high court found that Yakima County Superior Court Judge F. James Gavin did not have to ask whether there were any age-related mitigating factors in Darren Stanley Harris' case because neither attorney brought it up in their mutually agreed plea agreement.
"We hold that when a sentencing court intends to follow a plea agreement and sentencing recommendation, there is no requirement that the court solicit mitigating and/or aggravating factors from the parties," Justice Barbara A. Madsen wrote for the majority.
Her ruling overturned a 2023 Division III Court of Appeals ruling that Harris was entitled to a new sentencing hearing that factored in his youth at the time of the incident.
But two justices argued that the ruling would undermine the state's efforts to ensure juveniles charged as adults do not receive constitutionally excessive sentences.
Yakima County Prosecuting Attorney Joe Brusic said he was "exceptionally pleased" with the ruling.
"It was a huge case for our office," Brusic said. "This was going to change a lot of cases in the state of Washington if we had lost it."
Brusic said if the decision went the other way, other inmates who were juveniles tried as adults could go back to court and get reductions on sentences they had already agreed to accept as part of plea agreements.
2011 homicide
Harris, who is now 31 and goes by Darren Steven Arquette, stabbed Luis Negrete Morales 21 times while sitting in a car with him in July 2011, and took Morales' wallet, according to court documents.
At the time of the killing, Harris was a month shy of his 18th birthday.
Initially charged with first-degree murder in Yakima County Superior Court, Harris pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and first-degree robbery in August 2012. As part of the plea agreement, then-Deputy Yakima County Prosecuting Attorney Alvin Guzman and defense attorney Scott Bruns recommended Harris serve a 220-month base sentence for the murder charge, with a 24-month deadly-weapons enhancement for a total of 244 months, or 20 years and four months. A 54-month sentence on the robbery charge would be served concurrently with those.
In statements in the appeal, Guzman and Bruns said the sentencing recommendation "was a heavily negotiated plea." Court documents include the back-and-forth emails between the attorneys as they hammered out the details of the sentencing recommendation.
As originally charged, Harris was facing a sentencing range of 20 to roughly 26 years in prison.
Gavin followed the recommendation, with the court record stating that he would not have approved it if the weapons enhancement were not included. The enhancement runs consecutively and cannot be reduced through good behavior.
Juvenile cases
In 2017, the state Supreme Court issued a ruling, referred to as Houston-Sconiers, requiring judges to consider the mitigating factors of youth at sentencing in adult court, and that the rule applies to all cases retroactively. The ruling is based on the premise that juveniles and young adults' brains are not sufficiently developed to avoid acting impulsively and that they are more likely to be rehabilitated than an older person.
Harris challenged his sentencing under the Houston-Sconiers ruling first in 2020 and in 2021 when the appellate court commission granted him an extension to file an appeal.
In 2023, a three-judge appellate court panel consisting of Judges Laurel Siddoway, George Fearing and Robert Lawrence-Berrey ruled that Harris could request a resentencing, but he would have to withdraw his guilty plea, as asking for a lower sentence would violate the plea agreement, as the state argued.
Madsen, writing for the majority, said that Houston-Sconiers typically involves cases where there's no agreement on the sentence. In Harris' case, the parties agreed to the sentence and claims that Harris' youth should warrant a shorter sentence were not presented.
If both sides agree to the sentence, Madsen reasoned, a judge cannot ask the attorneys about mitigating factors as it might cause a breach in the plea agreement, especially if there was a provision not to seek a shorter sentence. Judges are not parties to plea agreements, and asking such questions would put them in the role of a participant, the high court found.
"The only inquiry that ought to be vigorously pursued is whether the person understands the nature of the charges, the consequences and whether the plea is voluntary," Justice Mary Yu wrote in her concurring opinion.
If a judge were to inquire about mitigating circumstances, the questioning may inadvertently unearth aggravating factors, Yu warned, and undermine the attorney's reasoning in presenting the case. Yu said the court's ruling protects a young defendant's right to privacy in how much of their lives they want to disclose in court.
The dissenters, Justices Raquel Montoya-Lewis and Sheryl Gordon McCloud, said the court ruling would remove a sentencing review from juveniles who were tried as adults and accepted plea bargains to resolve their cases, even though they may not have the maturity to fully appreciate the consequences of that decision.
"The majority seems to believe that a juvenile can assess those risks with maturity an adult might, even though we have stated countless times 'children are different'," Montoya-Lewis wrote in the dissent.
Montoya-Lewis said in a Houston-Sconiers review, a judge hearing Harris' case would have had the discretion to run the weapons enhancement concurrent to the base sentence.
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