Where is tabitha buck?

Answer 1

Tabitha Faith Buck (b. May 26, 1974 in Anchorage, AK) became part of a high-profile and heinous murder case following the death of fellow juvenile and student (at Conestoga Valley High School, Lancaster County, PA), Laurie Michelle Show, on December 20, 1991. Tabitha received a sentence of life without parole for a 2nd degree murder conviction, which is notable because the adult perpetrator of the crime, Lisa Michelle Lambert, was convicted of 1st degree murder ... but received the identical sentence. While Tabitha remained silent about the deadly event until 1997, an exercise of her Constitutional rights that was misconstrued by some to be uncooperative, Lambert attracted considerable attention by blaming first Tabitha for the crime, and later adding her (Lambert's) boyfriend and father of her daughter, Lawrence Yunkin.

Lambert's courtroom exploits are almost legendary, and are well-documented elsewhere; suffice to say the Supreme Court of the United States, SCOTUS, brought these to an end by declining to review her conviction in 2005. By the way, before the 2005 SCOTUS' declination, Lambert caused considerable sensation by accusing the East Lampeter Township Police Department of multiple sexual assaults, none of which could be substantiated and at least one of which was exposed as a palpable lie. Lambert's wild allegations included a frivolous charge that Tabitha was implicated in a murder before she left Alaska; Tabitha was four years old at the time of her alleged participation in the crime. Lambert also accused a member of her family of sexual assault, charges which also lacked any substantiation, or for that matter credibility.

Tabitha was lured into the crime by the same sort of persuasive charisma, the same manipulative resourcefulness, that won over a small but unshakable number of Lambert supporters, as well as a (married) couple of defense attorneys and even Federal District Court Judge, Stewart Dalzell. Lambert's extraordinary talent for persuasion led that trio into considerable controversy.

Tabitha has meanwhile been a model prisoner and an inmate teacher at Muncy; her story remains a work in progress, but it appears that the Supreme Court had someone such as her in mind when they struck down her sentence, along with the sentences of some 2000 others nationwide. 480 of these are incarcerated in Pennsylvania. Although that story has gone a long way towards resolution, and it has produced genuine details which a novelist might employ in dramatic fiction.

For two decades it seemed as if Tabitha might end her days at the Muncy (PA) Correctional Facility, but then a determined effort by The Sentencing Project and large number of legal experts challenged the imposition of mandatory life without parole for juvenile offenders; even her sentencing judge in 1992 stated that only the mandatory provision of the law led him to impose that sentence. Arguments were heard on March 20, 2012, by SCOTUS, and on June 25, 2012, the high court ruled that the mandatory sentencing to life without parole for juvenile offenders violates the 8th Amendment, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment.

At the heart of their decision, MILLER V. ALABAMA, is the fact that juveniles including Tabitha had been and were being tried as adults, something that long precedent and even two earlier SCOTUS rulings had found to be unacceptable - that is, unconstitutional. This might have put an end to a long and very trying struggle, not only for Tabitha but for nearly 500 others incarcerated in Pennsylvania, and more than 2000 nationwide, who had been so convicted, but it soon became obvious that a number of states, including the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, intended to take the extraordinary step of defining the limits of this particular US Supreme Court decision.

This struck many observers, particularly those familiar with FURMAN V. GEORGIA (which in 1972 overruled the sentences of all those who had been condemned to death and were presently awaiting execution on the death rows in the several states) as a peculiar undertaking, if not outright frivolous and/or downright absurd. But this did not deter the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which ruled, 4 votes to 3 in COMMONWEALTH V. CUNNINGHAM, June 9, 2014, that the Miller decision could not be applied retroactively in Pennsylvania. In other words, it was the position of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court that violations of the Constitution could not be remedied for those who had been given unconstitutional sentences before June 25, 2012.

Similar decisions were reached in other states, including Louisiana, where (as we shall see) the eventual outcome proved in time to be far more decisive. The Pennsylvania General Assembly had in the interim passed Act 204, which ostensibly addresses Tabitha's 2nd-degree murder conviction, but does so in a manner which defines juvenile status more restrictively than does SCOTUS in MILLER. Act 204 proved to be virtually meaningless RE MILLER, not only because juveniles are implicitly identified as being under the age of 15 (three year younger than the US Supreme Court's definition) and Act 204 does not apply retroactively - to anyone.

(SPECIAL NOTE:The Pennsylvania high court which decided COMMONWEALTH would go on to carve a niche for itself in judicial history, but for what may be regarded as all the wrong reasons: one justice would be sentenced to prison for violation of election laws, another would be obliged to resign from the court due to a scandal in which the justices accessed inappropriate material online by way of state-owned computers, and a third faces expulsion in connection with the same issue. However relevant one may consider the following, it is a fact that COMMONWEALTH was decided by a vote of four Republicans to three Democrats, and in the most recent (2015) election, the political composition of the court was changed to five Democrats and two Republicans. The new Pennsylvania Supreme Court includes its first Chief Justice-designate, Debra McCloskey Todd. To do it justice, however, the State's previously-constituted high court also ruled against Republican former Governor Tom Corbett, and their decision in COMMONWEALTH reflected a conservative rather a partisan perspective.)

As it happens, COMMONWEALTH proved to have only temporary significance; any force it exerted was rendered inoperative January 25, 2016, when SCOTUS issued its ruling, by a vote of 6 to 3, in MONTGOMERY. An interesting bit of incidental commentary: Chief Justice John Roberts joined the majority in this ruling, and one of the three dissenters was the late Justice Antonin Scalia.

The State of Louisiana had ruled against the retroactive power of MILLER based on an earlier SCOTUS ruling commonly known as the "Teague exception;" in that ruling it was held that changes in court procedures, required by newer SCOTUS rulings, would not to be applied retroactively to any older rulings. But MONTGOMERY establishes beyond any possible doubt, or any such "Teague exception," that the MILLER decision does not mandate or require a change in procedure; it requires - it clearly and plainly orders - a change in the substance of the law, and such changes must be applied retroactively. To put this in much simpler language, Tabitha's mandatory sentence of life without the possibility of parole, and any other such sentence imposed upon those who was under 18 at the time their crimes occurred, is unconstitutional.

This led to protests from, among others, Lancaster County (PA) District Attorney Craig Stedman, who emphasized that other innocent people are, in his words, "going to be hurt." It would appear that he means emotionally hurt; the families and friends of those killed by juveniles are now obliged to appear at future parole hearings, something they assumed they would never be required to do. And it is difficult to deny that certain convictions might deserve to remain enforced. It also appears, however, that Mr. Stedman refers to juveniles convicted of 1st degree murder, as even the now-superseded PA Act 204 provides, however selectively, that 2nd degree murder convictions no longer require mandatory sentences of life without parole.

Although he might claim that this is "fake news," it is reasonable to infer that Craig Stedman's stance RE Tabitha and other juvenile "lifers" is/was in some way connected to his candidacy for a seat on the PA Superior Court; in fact he appears on the Republican Party's 2017 ticket. He has in fact been associated with essays describing ways to undercut or at least delay enforcement of MILLER; he also expressed his dissatisfaction with MONTGOMERY. He did so by calling upon the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to define such phrases as "permanent incorrigibility," "irreparable corruption" and "irretrievable depravity," which SCOTUS identifies as the only criteria through which juvenile defenders can be sentenced to life without parole; although unlikely (given judicial precedent), he might also have anticipated that the high court would place upon the defense the burden of proving the juvenile's capacity for rehabilitation. It was estimated by some public defenders that this could extend the issue well into 2018 if not beyond.

In the end, the PA Supreme Court decided the matter a year ahead of schedule, on the heels of the conclusion of SCOTUS' 2016-17 term, and not in a manner that Stedman might have hoped. Given, however, that he was also on the ballot for the PA Superior Court by then, that may have been beside the point, although he was defeated in that endeavor also. Writing for the majority, Associate Justice Christine Hughes declared that the prosecution, including Craig Stedman were he still prosecuting, "… bears the burden of proving, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the juvenile defender is incapable of rehabilitation." While each case in which a juvenile "lifer" is resentenced is conducted on an individual basis, The Sentencing Project notes that Pennsylvania has taken a leading position in resolving these issues in a manner consistent with SCOTUS rulings and with affording juveniles opportunities to lead free and productive lives. Tabitha was resentenced November 20, 2017, to 28 years to life, making her eligible for parole in the fall of 2020.

Answer 2

She's in jail