Kyle C. Barry is the director of the State Law Research Initiative (SLRI). Slri submitted Amicus’s letter Defendant’s support Hicks vs State In front of the Wyoming Supreme Court.
The Wyoming Supreme Court on Tuesday said it could join the growing list of state high courts that expanded the state’s constitutional rights to strict criminal penalties, particularly life prison conditions imposed on young people and young adults.
The court heard the debate Hicks vs Stateasks whether Wyoming’s right to “cruel or unusual” punishment prohibits prison conditions for automatic life for people under the age of 21. Noting that people’s freedom is at stake, multiple justices questioned extraordinary respect. The 8th amendment usually gives even the most Drakon’s ruling law – and proposed it. state The constitutional limit on punishment is a “fundamental right” that guarantees the same law enforcement as the right to free speech or equal protection.
“We are taking the superiority approach of the state’s constitutional law, and if there is a claim that (the judgment law) violates fundamental rights, there is an opportunity for a constitutional analysis of another state,” Judge Lynn Boomgarden said. “So why do we make a hole in our eighth correction analysis?”
This line of interrogation, which re-emerged throughout the discussion, reveals annoying contradiction at the heart of the 8th Amended Case Precedent Act. Both state and federal constitutions provide a fundamental right to freedom. But instead of forcing the state to justify the extreme punishment needed, federal courts have been practical for the most part. The state Supreme Court cannot amend federal law, but at least some members of Wyoming’s five commander courts recognized that state constitutional law, which has the power to finalize, offers an opportunity to diagram better courses.
Chris Hicks, 19, was convicted of first-degree murder and automatically gave him a life in prison without the opportunity to be released. If Hicks was only two years younger, there is no controversy that his sentence was unconstitutional. The US Supreme Court decided that Miller vs Alabamaa 2012 case that prohibited mandatory and obligatory orders for people under the age of 18. mirror He did not abolish all life writing for the children, but said it should only be imposed after a hearing that the judges consider essentially “easing the qualities of young people.” The court explained that imposes a sentence of forever suffering in prison should be reserved only for the most dangerous and condemned offenders. However, constantly growing neurological evidence indicates that children and young adults are inherently less responsible. They are impulsive and prone to peer pressure – and the court noted that even if they commit a horrible crime, they have a greater ability to change as they mature. Given this scientific reality, children risk dying in prisons based solely on beliefs, and endure punishment on those who can regenerate society and re-enter society.
Since mirrorthe U.S. Supreme Court has become more hostile to civil rights that limit police and punishment. But the state’s Supreme Court used its own constitution to push mirror To that logical conclusion. By 2016, both the Massachusetts and the Iowa High Court had banned all lives without parole statements, mandatory or other life for young people. They reasoned that if virtually all children are able to carry out reforms, it would be unreasonable to ask a judge in the court of justice to identify, at the time of the verdict, rare few that are truly irreparable and dangerous forever. That decision would be mere speculation that inevitably infected the crime itself.
In 2020, the Washington Supreme Court was first extended mirror For all young people under the age of 21. The same scientific evidence is found in the courts. mirror The brain often continues to develop into your 20s until you are 25 years old. “There is no meaningful cognitive difference,” the court wrote between people between the ages of 18 and 20, “There is no constitutional difference.” The Michigan Supreme Court reached the same conclusion this year, but last year the Massachusetts Supreme Court went even further and repealed it. all Life without parole statements for people under the age of 21.
It may be unexpected that a politically conservative state like Wyoming will become the next state that extends protection against extreme rulings. The federal constitution has one provision that limits criminal penalties (Amendment 8), but the Wyoming constitution, adopted in 1889, has three. Section 14 bar “Cruel” or An abnormal “punishment,” an intentional choice of text that alone suggests broader rights than the Federation. and Unusual clause. Section 15 orders “humanitarian” criminal law based on “reform and prevention.” Section 16 provides for “safe and comfortable prisons,” ensuring “humane treatment of prisoners,” and prohibiting the prohibition of “unnecessary rigor” from treating people in prisons. Together, these suggest not only to prevent cruelty, but also to actively support the dignity of those who committed the most serious crimes, and to “reform” the legal system rather than simply punishing it.
In 1898, two representatives of the Wyoming Constitutional Convention were among their members, and the Wyoming Supreme Court explained that “our constitution explicitly adopts humanitarian theory.” The court continued: “Prisoner reform is the purpose of that one animation.”
That history depends on Tuesday on putting some openness of justice in the context, treating the right to excessive punishment as fundamental. They wondered why sending someone to prison should not cause the same enhanced judicial review as other fundamental disenfranchisement.
“When you’re talking about life and freedom, you’re talking about basic rights,” Chief Justice Kate Fox, who retired later this month, told Hicks’ attorney Professor Lauren McClain. “So what’s the problem with strict scrutiny?”
Even Judge John Fenn, worried about breaking the laws that ruled, offered that treating a “cruel or unusual” prohibitions like other fundamental rights could solve the issue, saying it could inappropriately interfere with legislative privileges. “If it was a speech (infringing) then it’s a fundamental right,” he said, a strict scrutiny review would apply. But when it comes to the “cruel or unusual” clause, “We have no many precedents” that leads to ways to enforce it.
McLain reminded the court that, rather than promoting reform as required by the National Constitution, it would be abandoned entirely of life without parole. She argued primarily that Wyoming’s “cruelty” must be informed by science that sending teenagers like Hicks to prison for their lives would wipe out the possibility of rehabilitation for those who could otherwise fully do so.
Apart from a few procedural objections, the state argued that Wyoming’s constitution does not offer any greater rights than anything else. mirror It is the job of the state legislature, not the judge, to change the way that young adults are punished. “It’s common sense that 20-year-olds are not fully developed,” admitted Deputy Attorney General Kristen Reeves-Jones. But she continued, but only Congress could decide whether it justifies a more generous sentence.
Fox pushed back that argument, noting that if, for example, a lawmaker took his life at the age of 16 without parole, it was cruel or unusual. “At some point,” she said, “it becomes a court job that intervenes.”
The decision in this case may have deep national meaning. Although several state Supreme Courts have expanded their right to excessive punishment, no one has explicitly treated them as an enhanced fundamental right to “stricken scrutiny” judicial review. If the Wyoming Supreme Court is doing so here, other state Supreme Courts can urge them to follow suit, and in the end we will see a meaningful judicial review of extreme sentences that continue to drive the nation’s mass incarceration crisis.
But for Hicks, the goal is more personal and his chance for release. “I believe that our beautiful national constitution has mercy,” his lawyer McClain finally said, “That’s what I want from you.”
Suggested Quote: Kyle C. Barry, The Wyoming Supreme Court has shown openness to limit excessive punishmentsᴛᴛᴇcᴏᴜʀᴛrᴇᴘᴏʀᴛ (May 14, 2025), https://statecourtreport.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/wyoming-supreme-court-signals-openness-limiting-exsive-punishments
