Alaska appeals court clears way to challenge juvenile life sentences

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — An Alaska appeals court ruling provides legal grounds for reexamining the sentences of people who were sentenced as juveniles to spend the rest of their lives in prison.

The Alaska Court of Appeals ruled in a case involving Winona Fletcher, who was 14 when she and a boyfriend broke into an Anchorage home in 1985 and fatally shot three people, the Anchorage Daily News reported.

The court ruled last year that the state constitution requires a sentencing judge to consider factors such as a juvenile defendant’s age before sentencing them to the functional equivalent of life without parole. And on Friday, the court affirmed a lower court ruling that the decision should be applied retroactively to Fletcher as well as other people sentenced as juveniles to what amounts to life without parole.

“Making Fletcher fully retroactive would advance an important constitutional principle — namely, ensuring that juveniles tried as adults in the Alaska courts are not subject to cruel and unusual punishment and that only juveniles who have been found to be ‘irreparably corrupt’ will remain sentenced to de facto life without parole sentences,” the ruling states.

Fletcher, who was the youngest female ever to be convicted of murder in Alaska, is serving a 135-year sentence. Only a few other incarcerated people in Alaska could benefit from the ruling, said Marcy McDannel, Fletcher’s attorney.

“This doesn’t open the floodgates to hundreds of cases,” she said. “It’s only in very extreme cases.”

One person, Brian Hall, was sentenced as a juvenile to a prison term longer than Fletcher’s. He has served 31 years of a 156-year sentence, according to his wife, Angela Hall, who is president of a support group for families of incarcerated people.

Two other juvenile defendants were sentenced to terms longer than 99 years, the ruling states. Six others have made claims related to the new criteria.

And the ruling doesn’t necessarily mean their sentences will be reduced — some could be reaffirmed by lower courts, McDannel said.

Fletcher could be resentenced under the new criteria as early as December, McDannel said, though litigation in the case continues.

Angela Hall said the decision will allow her husband and others to seek resentencing based on the principle that factors such as advances in the study of the developing adolescent brain and trauma should inform how young people are held accountable in the criminal justice system.

“When we read that decision, we burst out into tears,” she said. “This is what we’ve been waiting for, hoping for something like this.”