The DC Sniper case is being heard by SCOTUS, Malvo wants a a new sentencing hearing

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Malvo, who was 17 at the time of the killings, is asking the court to allow him to be resentenced because a pair of Supreme Court cases in recent years held that courts must consider a minor’s age before sentencing him or her to life without parole

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The cases that Malvo is relying on concern mandatory life without parole sentences for minors. The Supreme Court barred such sentences in 2012, in a case called Miller v. Alabama that held that they violated the Eighth Amendment.

Justice Elena Kagan, writing for a 5-4 majority, wrote that sentencers must “take into account how children are different, and how those differences counsel against irrevocably sentencing them to a lifetime in prison.”

Four years later, the top court applied that rule retroactively in Montgomery v. Louisiana.

Given those cases, the federal appeals court based in Richmond said last year that Malvo is entitled to be re-sentenced.

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