De facto LWOP sentence for juveniles prohibited.

Byline: Correy Stephenson, BridgeTower Media Newswires

Sentencing a juvenile to a de facto life without parole sentence may run afoul of the U.S. Constitution's Eighth Amendment, the North Carolina Court of Appeals has ruled, saying that a prison sentence that provided the defendant no opportunity for release for at least 50 years was unconstitutional.

When James Ryan Kelliher was 17 he took part in a robbery that ended with the murders of two people. He pleaded guilty and in 2004 was sentenced to two consecutive terms of life without parole (LWOP)the mandatory sentence for murder at the time. Eight years later, however, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its landmark ruling Miller v. Alabama, which held that mandatory LWOP for a juvenile offender is a disproportionate punishment under the Eighth Amendment, even for juveniles convicted of homicide crimes.

Kelliher sought and received a resentencing hearing, at which the trial court cited 13 mitigating factors, including Kelliher's troubled early life, his immaturity and drug addictions at the time of the offenses, and the substantial evidence of his rehabilitation. Concluding that he was neither "incorrigible" nor "irredeemable," the trial court resentenced him to two consecutive sentences of life with parole.

Kelliher appealed, arguing that because he wouldn't be eligible for parole until he had served at least 50 years in prison, with his earliest possible release at the age of 67, his sentences constituted de facto LWOP in violation of the Eighth Amendment and state constitution.

In a unanimous Oct. 6 opinion written by Chief Judge Linda McGee, the Court of Appeals agreed.

"In determining Defendant's appeal, we hold under Eighth Amendment jurisprudence: (1) de facto LWOP sentences imposed on juveniles may run afoul of the Eighth Amendment; (2) such punishments may arise out of aggregated sentences; and (3) a sentence that provides no opportunity for release for 50 or more years is cognizable as a de facto LWOP sentence," McGee wrote.

The line of U.S. Supreme Court cases led to Miller began in 2005 with Roper v. Simmons, in which the justices held that the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments categorically forbid imposition of the death penalty on offenders who were under the age of 18 when their crimes were committed.

In 2010, the Court decided Graham v. Florida, extending the rationale in Roper to hold that juveniles may not be sentenced to LWOP for non-homicide offenses under the Eighth...