Ruling voiding life for minor recalled

State to ask U.S. justices for guidance

The Arkansas Supreme Court agreed Thursday to recall a ruling that voided the life sentence of an inmate convicted as a minor, while state attorneys ask the U.S. Supreme Court for guidance in such cases.

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The state attorney general's office asked for the recall while it asks the nation's high court for a writ of certiorari clarifying whether Arkansas should retroactively apply U.S. Supreme Court rulings that found unconstitutional mandatory life sentences without parole for teenagers.

The U.S. Supreme Court is not obliged to consider the request for a writ in the case of Ulonzo Gordon, whose life sentence for a June 1995 murder he committed at age 17 was voided this summer by the state's high court.

Without dissent, the state court ruled it could retroactively apply federal rulings that mandatory life sentences for juveniles were "cruel and unusual" punishment prohibited by the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

Jeff Rosenzweig, an attorney for Gordon, said he doubts the U.S. Supreme Court will pick up the case.

"All this is going to do is delay things," Rosenzweig said. "The state has a right to take it up [to the U.S. Supreme Court] but we felt that this really ... we didn't want to delay all the other people from having their hearings."

Rosenzweig said he represents many of the 54 Arkansas inmates who were minors when they were given mandatory sentences of life without parole in capital crimes.

All of them, Rosenzweig said, have submitted motions in civil court for habeas corpus, accusing the state of wrongful imprisonment because their sentences have been found to be unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court.

In two separate rulings in 2012, including one involving an Arkansas inmate, Kuntrell Jackson, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that such mandatory life sentences for youths were cruel and unusual forms of punishment and barred by state statute.

Gordon appealed his sentence but state attorneys argued that the 2012 rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court didn't apply retroactively.

Rosenzweig said a ruling in a Minnesota case showed that a state can choose to apply the high court's ruling retroactively.

In June, Arkansas Justice Robin Wynne wrote that since Jackson was afforded an opportunity for new sentencing, Gordon should have the same opportunity as a "matter of fundamental fairness and evenhanded justice."

Gordon has yet to go back to Crittenden County for resentencing, and Rosenzweig said Gordon will be unable to do so until the U.S. Supreme Court decides whether to act on the request for a writ.

Gregg Parrish, the head of the Arkansas Public Defender Commission, said he anticipates his office will work with many of the inmates if they see the appeals of their sentences sent back to criminal court.

But he said the challenges of their civil cases will need to happen first and he expects Thursday's decision will prolong the process.

"I think it will pretty much stay everything," Parrish said. "None of them have gone back to the criminal courts so we haven't been appointed. ... We will be monitoring those [cases] at this point."

Metro on 10/09/2015

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