Jarvin M. Huggins, who broke into Gene M. Slavinsky's Mahanoy City home and murdered him in April 2012, must remain in prison for the rest of his life, a three-judge state Superior Court panel has decided.
In a nine-page opinion provided Wednesday in Pottsville, the panel ruled Huggins, 20, of Mahanoy City, was an adult when he murdered Slavinsky and cannot take advantage of recent decisions that barred the mandatory imposition of a life sentence without parole on juveniles.
"The General Assembly had established a bright-line, age-based measure to determine when an individual convicted of first degree murder is subject to a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment without parole," Senior Judge James J. Fitzgerald III wrote in the panel's opinion.
As a result, Huggins will serve the sentence of life without parole that county Judge John E. Domalakes imposed May 10, 2013, for the death of Slavinsky, 48. Huggins is serving his sentence at State Correctional Institution/Somerset.
After a two-day trial over which Domalakes presided, a jury convicted Huggins on March 5, 2013, of first-, second- and third-degree murder, burglary, robbery, aggravated assault, criminal trespass, theft and unauthorized use of a motor vehicle.
State police at Frackville said Huggins hid in the basement of Slavinsky's 408 W. Centre St. home on April 3, 2012, hit him about 24 times with a window counterweight and then stole his laptop computer, car and about $100 in money.
Huggins, who was 18 when he murdered Slavinsky, said in his appeal that the U.S. Supreme Court's bar of mandatory life sentences for juveniles should be extended to people who do not have an adult's mental capacity. At Huggins' sentencing hearing, his lawyer, Assistant Public Defender Kent D. Watkins, presented as a witness Pottsville clinical psychologist David F. O'Connell, who testified the defendant had a mental age of 11 or 12.
In the panel's opinion, however, Fitzgerald rejected that rationale.
"The (U.S. Supreme) Court considered chronological age as the determinative factor in assessing the constitutionality of such sentences," he wrote.
Since that decision, Pennsylvania has altered its law to make life sentences for juveniles optional, with the alternative being imprisonment for at least 25 or 35 years, depending on the killer's age.
Furthermore, mandatory life sentences for adults are clearly constitutional and Domalakes properly imposed one on Huggins, Fitzgerald wrote.
"(Domalakes) lacked authority to impose a sentence less severe than that mandated by the legislature," according to Fitzgerald.
Judge Mary Jane Bowes and Judith Ference Olson, the other panel members, concurred in Fitzgerald's opinion.
Huggins has never offered any explanation in or out of court for why he murdered Slavinsky. Defendant: Jarvin M. Huggins
Age: 20
Residence: Mahanoy City
Crimes committed: First-, second- and third-degree murder, burglary, robbery, aggravated assault, criminal trespass, theft and unauthorized use of a motor vehicle
Prison sentence: Life imprisonment without parole