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.

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