Wyatt L. Bear Cloud, Appellant (defendant) v. the State of Wyoming, Appellee (plaintiff)

Summary

The court held that a juvenile's lengthy consecutive sentences, which effectively required him to spend the rest of his life in prison, triggered the Eighth Amendment protections governing juvenile life-without-parole sentences. It reversed and remanded for resentencing on all counts after an individualized hearing addressing youth-related mitigating factors and the practical effect of the entire sentencing package. The court declined to extend those protections to every mandatory life sentence imposed on a juvenile accomplice because the controlling precedent had not adopted that broader rule.