State v. McCleese

Citations

• 333 Conn. 378

Syllabus

Pursuant to Miller v. Alabama (567 U.S. 460) and State v. Riley (315 Conn. 637), the prohibition against cruel and usual punishments in the federal constitution precludes a court from sentencing a juvenile offender to life imprisonment, or its functional equivalent, without the possibility of parole, unless the juvenile offender's age and the hallmarks of adoles- cence have been considered as mitigating factors in the sentencing deter- mination. Pursuant further to recent legislation (P.A. 15-84, § 1), a person convicted of a crime or crimes committed while such person was under eighteen years of age who received a total effective sentence of more than ten years prior to or after the effective date of the act becomes eligible for parole after serving 60 percent of his or her sentence, or in the case of sentences of more than fifty years imprisonment, after serving thirty years. The defendant, who had been convicted of the crimes of murder, conspiracy to commit murder, and assault in the first degree, appealed from the trial court's dismissal of his motion to correct an illegal sentence. The defendant was seventeen years old when he committed the crimes and was sentenced to eighty-five years imprisonment without eligibility for parole. The sentencing court made no express reference to the defen- dant's youth and the hallmarks of adolescence as mitigating factors when it sentenced him. After the defendant was sentenced, Miller and Riley were decided, and P.A. 15-84 was enacted. The defendant claimed before the court deciding his motion to correct that, under the federal and state constitutions, his sentence was imposed in an illegal manner because the sentencing court made no express reference to his youth and the hallmarks of adolescence as mitigating factors. The defendant also claimed that the retroactive parole eligibility that he was afforded by P.A. 15-84 did not constitute a remedy for a Miller violation under the Connecticut constitution, and, thus, he was ent