Andrew Conley, Appellant (defendant Below) v. State of Indiana, Appellee (plaintiff Below)

Summary

The Indiana Supreme Court affirmed the life-without-parole sentence imposed on seventeen-and-a-half-year-old Andrew Conley for murdering his ten-year-old brother, holding that the trial court properly admitted the State's rebuttal expert testimony, properly weighed the sole statutory aggravator (the victim's age) against the proffered mitigators, and imposed a sentence that is not inappropriate under Appellate Rule 7(B) given the prolonged brutality of the offense and the offender's hardened character. On an issue first raised at oral argument, the Court further held that a discretionary life-without-parole sentence for a person under eighteen convicted of murder violates neither the Eighth Amendment nor the Indiana Constitution, because Miller condemns only mandatory juvenile-LWOP schemes and Roper and Graham leave LWOP for juvenile homicide intact. Rucker, J., joined by Sullivan, J., dissented: agreeing on the evidentiary and weighing issues, he would have reduced the sentence to sixty-five years under Rule 7(B), viewing Conley as a mentally ill youth whose sentence is of the kind the Supreme Court said should be uncommon.