Split Connecticut Supreme Court works through Miller application issues

As reported in this local AP piece, headlined "Connecticut court tosses 100-year sentence imposed on teen," the top court in the Nutmeg State issued a notable and significant ruling on juvenile sentencing in the wake of recent SCOTUS Eighth Amendment jurisprudence. Here are the basics:

The Connecticut Supreme Court on Friday overturned a 100-year prison sentence that was imposed on a Hartford teenager in a murder case, saying juveniles cannot be treated the same as adults when being sentenced for violent crimes.

In a 5-2 ruling, justices ordered a new sentencing hearing for Ackeem Riley, who was 17 in November 2006 when he sprayed gunfire into a Hartford crowd from a passing car. Three bystanders were shot, including 16-year-old honor student Tray Davis, who died....

The Miller decision was one of three U.S. Supreme Court rulings since 2005 that “fundamentally altered the legal landscape for the sentencing of juvenile offenders to comport with the ban on cruel and unusual punishment,” Connecticut Justice Andrew McDonald wrote in the majority decision. The rulings also barred capital punishment for all juvenile offenders and prohibited life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for juveniles in non-homicide cases.

McDonald wrote in Friday’s ruling, which overturned a state Appellate Court decision, that it didn’t appear trial Judge Thomas V. O’Keefe Jr. adequately considered Riley’s age at the time of the shooting. “The court made no mention of facts in the presentence report that might reflect immaturity, impetuosity, and failure to appreciate risks and consequences,” McDonald wrote. “In the entire sentencing proceeding, only defense counsel made an oblique reference to age.”

Justices Carmen Espinoza and Peter Zarella dissented....

State lawmakers are now considering a bill that would revamp Connecticut’s juvenile sentencing rules to conform to the U.S. Supreme court rulings. A similar measure failed last year. There are about 50 Connecticut prisoners serving sentences of 50 or more years for crimes committed when they were under 18, and most are not eligible for parole. Defense lawyers say they expect more appeals involving the juvenile sentencing issue.

The extended majority ruling in Connecticut v. Riley is available at this link, and it gets started with these passages:

The defendant, Ackeem Riley, was seventeen years old when he committed homicide and nonhomicide offenses for which the trial court imposed, in the exercise of its discretion, a total effective sentence of 100 years imprisonment. The defendant has no possibility of parole before his natural life expires. In his certified appeal to this court, the defendant claims that his sentence and the procedures under which it was imposed violate Graham and Miller, and, hence, the eighth amendment....

We agree with the defendant’s Miller claim. Therefore, he is entitled to a new sentencing proceeding at which the court must consider as mitigation the defendant’s age at the time he committed the offenses and the hallmarks of adolescence that Miller deemed constitutionally significant when a juvenile offenderis subject to a potential life sentence. We decline, however, to address the defendant’s Graham claim. As we explain later in this opinion, the legislature has received a sentencing commission’s recommendations for reforms to our juvenile sentencing scheme to respond to the dictates of Graham and Miller. Therefore, in deference to the legislature’s authority over such matters and in light of the uncertainty of the defendant’s sentence upon due consideration of the Miller factors, we conclude that it is premature to determine whether it would violate the eighth amendment to preclude any possibility of release when a juvenile offender receives a life sentence.

The dissenting Riley opinion is available at this link, and it starts this way:

I disagree with the majority’s conclusion that the total effective sentence of 100 years imprisonment imposed by the trial court on the defendant, Ackeem Riley, violates the eighth amendment to the United States constitution. I agree with the Appellate Court’s conclusion that, "[b]ecause the court exercised discretion in fashioning the defendant’s sentence, and was free to consider any mitigating evidence the defendant was able to marshal, including evidence pertaining to his age and maturity"; State v. Riley, 140 Conn. App. 1, 4, 58 A.3d 304 (2013); the sentence complied with the decision of the United States Supreme Court in Miller v. Alabama, 132 S. Ct. 2455, 183 L. Ed. 2d 407 (2012), which held that "the [e]ighth [a]mendment forbids a sentencing scheme that mandates life in prison without possibility of parole for juvenile offenders." (Emphasis added.) Id., 2469. To be clear, therefore, Miller applies only to mandatory sentencing schemes. Accordingly, I respectfully dissent.