June 25, 2012 11:56 PM UTC

Colorado Juvie Life Sentences Unconstitutional

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• by: ohwilleke

( – promoted by Colorado Pols)

The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling today in the Miller v. Alabama case has held that juvenile life without parole homicide sentences, which several dozen juveniles are currently serving in the state under a now repealed state criminal statute, are unconstitutional under the circumstances under which they were imposed in Colorado.

Realistically, the Colorado General Assembly will probably be given an opportunity to draft a new law to govern how these juveniles should be resentenced before a court orders a particular response.  The obvious option would be to reply the existing sentencing law for juvenile first degree murder convicts retroactively, something that Colorado prosecutors have fiercely resisted when this has been proposed in the Colorado General Assembly.

The existing law in new first degree murder cases with juvenile defendants imposes life sentences with a possibility of parole after forty years (barring any recent amendments of which I am not aware in the 2012 legislative session package of juvenile justice statutory amendments [UPDATE: there weren’t any amendments to Colorado Revised Statutes 18-1.3-401(4)(b) where the 40 years rule is found, in the 2012 legislative session.]).

Neither Governor Hickenloooper nor Governor Ritter before him, have used their pardon powers to address this issue comprehensively.