Sam v. State

• Decision Date: 10 October 2019
• Docket Number: S-19-0031
• Citation: 450 P.3d 217
• Parties: Phillip SAM, Appellant (Defendant), v. The STATE of Wyoming, Appellee (Plaintiff).
• Court: Wyoming Supreme Court

450 P.3d 217

Phillip SAM, Appellant (Defendant),
v.
The STATE of Wyoming, Appellee (Plaintiff).

S-19-0031

Supreme Court of Wyoming.

October 10, 2019

Representing Appellant: Office of the State Public Defender: Diane Lozano, State Public Defender; Kirk A. Morgan, Chief Appellate Counsel; David E. Westling, Senior Assistant Appellate Counsel.

Representing Appellee: Bridget Hill, Wyoming Attorney General; Jenny L. Craig, Deputy Attorney General; Christyne M. Martens, Senior Assistant Attorney General; Timothy P. Zintak, Assistant Attorney General

Before DAVIS, C.J., and FOX, KAUTZ, BOOMGAARDEN, and GRAY, JJ.

DAVIS, Chief Justice.

¶1] Phillip Sam was convicted of one count of first-degree murder and twelve counts of aggravated assault and battery for crimes he committed when he was sixteen years old. The district court found that Mr. Sam was not a juvenile so irredeemable that he deserved a sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, and instead sentenced him to an aggregate prison term that left him eligible for parole after fifty-two years. This Court upheld Mr. Sam’s conviction, but found his sentence was a de facto life without parole sentence in violation of the Eighth Amendment, and remanded for resentencing. On remand, the district court imposed an aggregate sentence that leaves Mr. Sam eligible for parole after serving thirty-five years. We affirm.

ISSUES

[¶2] Mr. Sam presents a single issue that we restate as: Did the district court violate the Eighth Amendment or abuse its discretion in sentencing Mr. Sam to an aggregate sentence that leaves him eligible for parole after serving thirty-five years?¹

FACTS

[¶3] In 2016, Mr. Sam was convicted of one count of first-degree murder and twelve counts of aggravated assault and battery. Sam v. State , 2017 WY 98, ¶ 8, 401 P.3d 834, 842 (Wyo. 2017). We described the underlying facts in our decision affirming the conviction:

Mr. Sam had ongoing conflict with a rival youth group, which escalated on October

[450 P.3d 219

4 and into the early hours of October 5, 2014. The afternoon of the 4th, Mr. Sam stole a .40 caliber S&W semi-automatic pistol from his mother’s boyfriend. Later, he had several communications with members of the rival group about setting up a fight. He made sure the group was primed to fight when he went out to the mall where they were watching a movie, located one of their cars, and broke its mirror and slashed its tires. Mr. Sam then went to hang out at his friend Timber Strange’s house. He took out the gun to show his friends and "said that he was going to kill someone that night."

When the car’s owner discovered the damage, one of the rival group, Damian Brennand, immediately called Mr. Sam, believing he was "the only known person who would have done it," and "told him ... he needed his ass beat," and that he was going to bring a gun to the park to shoot Mr. Sam. Later, one member of the group called Mr. Sam back to say they "couldn’t get their hands on a gun. They couldn’t find one," but they wanted to meet him and fight. Mr. Sam changed the location of the encounter to Martin Luther King Park and went there with five friends. Mr. Sam took the pistol, and he and Timber Strange sat in a pavilion for about 15 minutes. Mr. Strange testified:

I had asked him if this was actually what he wanted to do, if he actually wanted to do this.

Q. [Prosecutor] And by this, what did you mean?

A. As in hurt people and potentially kill somebody.

Q. And what did he say?

A. He had said, yeah, that he had felt that he needed to do it.

When one of their friends called to tell them the rival group was approaching, Mr. Sam and Mr. Strange, who had bandanas on their faces, moved to stand between some trees. As the group of 12 youths approached, the two stepped out from the trees and Mr. Sam shot repeatedly. One bullet grazed Damian Brennand’s arm, and another struck Tyler Burns in the chest. Mr. Burns fell to the ground. Mr. Sam approached Mr. Burns, who said "no" three or four times, and Mr. Sam shot him through his hand and head. Mr. Burns died as a result. The other 10 members of the rival group were not injured. Mr. Sam was 16 years old.

Sam , ¶¶ 4-6, 401 P.3d at 841-42.

¶4] Before Mr. Sam’s original sentencing, the district court held an evidentiary hearing to determine whether he was one of the rare juveniles who is irredeemable and should be sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.² Sam , ¶ 79, 401 P.3d at 859. The court found that he was not and that he should be eligible for parole at some point in his life. Id . Based on that determination, the court sentenced him as follows:

Mr. Sam was sentenced to life for the first-degree murder charge. He could be eligible for parole after 25 years on that sentence because he was under 18 at the time of the crime. Wyo. Stat. Ann. § 6-10-301(c) (LexisNexis 2017). He was sentenced

[450 P.3d 220

to 9 to 10 years on each of the aggravated assault charges, which the district court bunched into three concurrent terms to be served consecutively—the sentence is life + 9-10 x 3, or, without counting good time, parole eligibility for Mr. Sam in 52 years (25 + 27), when he would be 70 years old.

Sam , ¶ 9, 401 P.3d at 842.

¶5] Mr. Sam appealed his conviction and sentence to this Court. We upheld his conviction but reversed his sentence and remanded for resentencing.

In Bear Cloud III , we analyzed the United States Supreme Court case law leading up to Miller and concluded that the prohibition of life without parole sentences required a "

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