State v. Riley


*********************************************** The “officially released” date that appears near the be- ginning of each opinion is the date the opinion will be pub- lished in the Connecticut Law Journal or the date it was released as a slip opinion. The operative date for the be- ginning of all time periods for filing postopinion motions and petitions for certification is the “officially released” date appearing in the opinion. All opinions are subject to modification and technical correction prior to official publication in the Connecticut Reports and Connecticut Appellate Reports. In the event of discrepancies between the advance release version of an opinion and the latest version appearing in the Connecticut Law Journal and subsequently in the Connecticut Reports or Connecticut Appellate Reports, the latest version is to be considered authoritative. The syllabus and procedural history accompanying the opinion as it appears in the Connecticut Law Journal and bound volumes of official reports are copyrighted by the Secretary of the State, State of Connecticut, and may not be reproduced and distributed without the express written permission of the Commission on Official Legal Publica- tions, Judicial Branch, State of Connecticut. *********************************************** STATE OF CONNECTICUT v. ACKEEM RILEY (AC 40073) Keller, Elgo and Bright, Js. Syllabus The defendant, who had been convicted of murder and several other crimes when he was seventeen years old, appealed to this court from the judgment of the trial court after it resentenced him to seventy years of imprisonment. The trial court initially had sentenced the defendant to 100 years of imprisonment in connection with a shooting incident. This court affirmed the judgment of the trial court, and the defendant appealed to our Supreme Court, which reversed this court’s judgment as to the sentence. The Supreme Court directed that this court remand the case to the trial court for a new sentencing proceeding that con- formed to the dictates of Miller v. Alabama (567 U.S. 460), which requires that the trial court give mitigating weight to the defendant’s youth and its hallmark features when considering whether to impose the functional equivalent of life imprisonment without parole. After this court remanded the case to the trial court, but before the defendant’s resen- tencing hearing, the legislature enacted amendments (P.A. 15-84) to the statutes applicable to the sentencing of children convicted of certain felonies (§ 54-91g) and parole eligibility (§ 54-125a) to ensure that juve- niles sentenced to more than ten years of imprisonment are eligible for parole, and to require that sentencing judges consider a juvenile’s age and youth related mitigating factors before imposing sentence. At the defendant’s resentencing hearing, the defendant was sentenced by the same judge who had presided over his trial and imposed the original sentence. On appeal to this court, the defendant claimed that the resen- tencing court improperly relied on the parole eligibility provisions of P.A. 15-84, and failed to disqualify itself in violation of statute (§ 51- 183c), the rule of practice (§ 1-22 [a]) that requires disqualification when the judicial authority previously tried the ...

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