Moore v. Biter, No. 11-56846 (8-7-13)(Pregerson with Fletcher and Nguyen).


In Graham v. Florida, 130 S. Ct 2011 (2010), the Supremes prohibit LWOP for juvenile non-homicide offenders. Here, the juvenile received 254 years, 4 months, for offenses committed when he was 16. His earliest parole date would be in 127 years, when he was 144 years old. Thus, his chance for parole was zero. The 9th held, importantly, that Graham applied on collateral review under Teague because it established a new rule for a class of defendants because of their status or offense. The 9th thus joined the 5th Circuit. The 9th went on to find that the state court's interpretation was unreasonable and contrary to the Supreme Court because it considered the petitioner's sentence to be a term of years and not LWOP. The sentence is basically the same as Graham.



Congrats to Deputy FPD Patricia Young of the Los Angeles FPD Office.