An Ashley County man convicted of murder as a teenager has to be sentenced to a term of years in prison, the Arkansas Supreme Court ruled Thursday, rejecting the state's arguments in favor of a life sentence.
The decision is moot, however, because the defendant has already been released from prison, according to his attorney.
The 6-1 decision by the high court in the case of 52-year-old Vernon Robinson follows a precedent-setting ruling by the justices in May, in which they determined that the state's Fair Sentencing of Minors Act could not be applied to another defendant, Derrick Harris.
Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Dan Kemp wrote that the circumstances of Robinson's case were "analogous" to Harris' case.
Robinson and his brother, Carl, each pleaded guilty to the 1983 rape and murder of Alice Mosley, 77, who lived across the street from the brothers in Wilmot.
Vernon Robinson, who was 17 years old at the time of the murder, admitted to cutting the telephone wires to the house and ransacking the house, but neither brother admitted to killing or raping the woman, according to court records.
Each brother avoided the death sentence by pleading guilty. They each received life-without-parole sentences.
The U.S. Supreme Court said in 2012 that automatic life-without-parole sentences for youths were unconstitutional. Four years later, the nation's justices applied that decision retroactively, setting the stage for dozens of resentencing hearings for former youthful offenders in Arkansas.
Then, in 2017, the Arkansas Legislature passed the Fair Sentencing of Minors Act, which changed the state's sentencing law to allow people sentenced as minors to life in prison the opportunity of parole after 25 or 30 years, depending on the degree of their crimes.
The law, however, caught offenders like Robinson and Harris in a legal Catch-22. They had already had their life sentences vacated after the 2016 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court, but they had not yet been given new sentences of a specific number of years that would enable them to apply for parole eligibility.
Some prisoners opted for resentencing hearings rather than the option provided by the Fair Sentencing of Minors Act because, with resentencing, they could potentially be eligible for parole sooner.
In May, the Arkansas Supreme Court ruled that the 2017 law could not be applied to Harris, and it reached the same conclusion regarding Robinson on Thursday.
However, Robinson was not listed in online state prison records Thursday. His attorney, James Wyatt, said it was his understanding that Robinson had been paroled at some point during the appeals process.
Joining Kemp's majority opinion were Justices Josephine Hart and Courtney Goodson. Justice Robin Wynne, who wrote a concurring opinion in the Harris case, said he concurred for the same reasons in the Robinson case.
Justice Rhonda Wood, who dissented in Harris' case, said she concurred with Kemp's opinion Thursday because she found no reason to overturn court precedent.
Justice Shawn Womack dissented from both cases.
Metro on 12/14/2018