The Arkansas Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a man sentenced to life in prison as a youthful offender was wrongly resentenced under the state's Fair Sentencing of Minors Act of 2017 and ordered that he receive a hearing that could result in a lesser sentence.
In a majority opinion written by Chief Justice Dan Kemp, the court ruled that a Crawford County Circuit Court judge erred when he sentenced Tony Ray in October 2017 under the Fair Sentencing of Minors Act.
The Arkansas Legislature passed the law in 2017 after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the 2016 case Miller v. Alabama that youths convicted of murder could not be sentenced to life in prison without parole, as Ray and more than 100 other youthful offenders in Arkansas had been.
The court applied a 2018 case similar to Ray's, Harris v. State, in making its ruling Thursday.
"We held that the penalty provisions of the [Fair Sentencing of Minors Act] are not retroactive; therefore the revised punishment for juveniles convicted of capital murder applies only to crimes committed on or after March 20, 2017, the effective date of the [act]," Kemp wrote.
Ray, now 38, was 16 in 1997 when he and Michael Hinkston shot Lisa Lewis to death with a shotgun in her Van Buren home and stole her car. Hinkston was an adult at the time of the slaying.
As a result of the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Miller v. Alabama, Ray successfully petitioned in Lincoln County Circuit Court to have his sentence vacated. The judge in the case ordered Ray returned to Crawford County to be resentenced.
Under Miller v. Alabama, Kemp wrote, Ray would be entitled to a sentencing hearing that would allow him to present evidence to a judge or jury on his individual characteristics and circumstances of the crime as mitigating factors for a lesser sentence.
Ray also would be entitled to present evidence for sentencing within the penalty range of a Class Y felony, which is 10 to 40 years or life in prison, the ruling said.
But before Ray could get his sentencing hearing under Miller v. Alabama, the Fair Sentencing of Minors Act was passed, and the prosecuting attorney in Crawford County filed in motion that Ray be sentenced under that act.
Under the act, youths convicted of capital murder would be eligible for parole after serving 30 years of their sentences.
Circuit Judge Gary Cottrell had sentenced Ray under the act to 30 years for capital murder and 20 years for theft, for which he also had been convicted, with the sentences to run consecutively.
He also gave Ray credit for 7,345 days served, according to circuit court records.
State Desk on 03/01/2019