In this Oct. 20, 2003, file photo, Lee Boyd Malvo listens to court proceedings during the trial of fellow sniper suspect John Allen Muhammad in Virginia Beach, Va.The justices will grapple with two key questions: Was Malvo's 2004 life sentence in Virginia effectively "mandatory" and now eligible for a review? And, did the Supreme Court mean to outlaw all life-without-parole sentences for juveniles, even those that were not mandatory?
The state argues that Malvo was locked up for life at the jury's discretion, given the viciousness of his crimes, and that the U.S. Supreme Court has not explicitly addressed "non-mandatory" life-without-parole punishment for juvenile murderers.
"This case is not about the meaning of the Eighth Amendment. Instead, it is about how and when decisions announcing new constitutional interpretations are made retroactive to other cases that have long become final when those interpretations are announced," attorneys for the state of Virginia tell the court.
The Virginia Supreme Court upheld Malvo's sentence of life without parole, but the federal 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals said the original sentence must be revisited in light of Supreme Court rulings requiring judges and juries to "take into account how children are different, and how those differences counsel against irrevocably sentencing them to a lifetime in prison."
The Trump administration opposes that decision. "Only mandatory sentences, imposed indiscriminately on all juvenile offenders, create the degree and kind of risk that would require retroactive invalidation," Solicitor General Noel Francisco writes in a friend-of-the-court brief.
Lawyers for Malvo say the jury in his case was not allowed to consider any sentence other than death or life without parole, making it effectively mandatory.
(MORE: Supreme Court Finds Life Without Parole Unconstitutional for Some Juvenile Criminals ) "There is no doubt that Malvo committed heinous crimes," Malvo's attorneys write in court documents. But "mandatory schemes, in which sentencers have no alternative but to sentence all juvenile offenders to life without parole, necessarily violate [the Supreme Court's 2012 decision] because they make youth (and all that accompanies it) irrelevant to imposition of that harshest prison sentence and thereby pose too great a risk of disproportionate punishment."
Malvo's accomplice, John Allen Muhammad, was sentenced to death and executed in 2009.
Kaynak:Abcnews