151309P.pdf   03/14/2016  United States  v.  Robert James Jefferson
   U.S. Court of Appeals Case No:  15-1309
   U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota - St. Paul   
   [PUBLISHED] [Loken, Author, with Murphy and Colloton, Circuit Judges] 
   Criminal case - Sentencing. After granting defendant's Section 2255(a) 
   petition seeking resentencing under Miller v. Alabama, 132 S. Ct. 2455 
   (2012) regarding mandatory life sentences for juvenile offenders, the 
   district court conducted a new sentencing hearing and varied downward from 
   the now-advisory guidelines range of life in prison and imposed a sentence 
   of 600 months; this sentence does not violate the Eighth Amendment 
   prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment as Supreme Court case law 
   does not create a categorical bar on life without parole for juveniles; 
   nor does the sentence fall with Miller's ban on mandatory 
   life-without-parole sentences; the sentence was not substantively 
   unreasonable as the court made an individualized decision which took into 
   account the distinctive attributes of youth and which weighed the 3553(a) 
   factors as informed by the Supreme Court's Eighth Amendment jurisprudence, 
   including defendant's youth at the time of the crimes, and his 
   rehabilitative efforts and good prison record; the fact remains, however, 
   that defendant's crimes were extreme - a firebombing causing the death of 
   five children, the attempted murder of another man and the distribution of 
   vast amounts of drugs - and he continued to refuse to accept full 
   responsibility for his actions, and the court's weighing of all the 
   factors was not an abuse of its substantial discretion; variance with the 
   sentence imposed on a thirteen-year-old juvenile who participated in the 
   firebombing was warranted by the differences in their ages and the fact 
   that the younger child could not be tried as an adult; argument that the 
   court erred in denying his request for a downward departure based on his 
   age was unreviewable.