North Carolina appeals court orders resentencing for man convicted of murder as teen
The North Carolina Court of Appeals (Photo: nccourts.gov)
The North Carolina Court of Appeals this week ordered a trial court to resentence a man imprisoned for murder he committed when he was a child.
The imprisoned man at the center of the case is James Kelliher, who is serving life sentences for crimes he committed when he was 17 years old. Kelliher has been incarcerated since 2001. His story was detailed in a 2022 NC Newsline report.
At oral arguments heard earlier this year, lawyers for the state said the trial court was allowed to resentence Kelliher to serve a sentence for the same crime twice, an argument the Court of Appeals rejected.
“Our Supreme Court made abundantly clear that, while the ordinary remedy on remand from a successfully appealed sentence is a new sentencing hearing within the discretion of the trial court, no such discretion existed here because the sole defect in the judgments was that the trial court had selected consecutive, rather than concurrent, life sentences with parole,” wrote Hunter Murphy, a Republican, in an 11-page opinion joined by Judges John Arrowood and Toby Hampson, who are both Democrats.
In 2022, the state Supreme Court ordered the trial court to resentence Kelliher. The court sent the case back with instructions for the trial court to impose concurrent life sentences with the possibility of parole. This would have made Kelliher eligible for parole decades sooner.
But that’s not what happened.
On March 31, 2023, Superior Court Judge James Floyd Ammons of Cumberland County imposed the two concurrent life-with-parole sentences as ordered by the high court. However, Ammons specified that these sentences would not start until after Kelliher had served consecutive sentences for armed robbery, each ranging between five and seven years. Ammons also added a two-to-three-year sentence for conspiracy, to run concurrently with the robbery terms.
The robbery sentences are significant because they impact when Kelliher will become eligible for parole.
Kelliher’s attorney argued in a court brief earlier this year that if Ammons had followed the Supreme Court’s order, Kelliher could be eligible for parole in 2026. But the consecutive armed robbery sentences mean he would not be eligible until 2037.
“Our Supreme Court held that ‘it violates both the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution and … North Carolina Constitution to sentence a juvenile homicide offender who has been determined to be neither incorrigible nor irredeemable to life without parole,’” wrote Murphy.
Kelliher received two consecutive sentences of life without parole after his friend killed Eric Carpenter and Kelsea Helton during a robbery they committed together.
Following the 2012 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Miller v. Alabama, which held that mandatory sentences of life without the possibility of parole are unconstitutional for juvenile offenders, those sentences were eventually changed to two consecutive life sentences with the possibility of parole, which meant Kelliher would need to serve 50 years before he would even be considered for release.
The 2022 ruling by the North Carolina Supreme Court held that such “de facto life sentences” are unconstitutional.
In her opinion at the time, Justice Anita Earls wrote that, “The crimes Kelliher committed and the pain he caused are irrevocable. He can never replace what he took from Carpenter, Helton, their friends and families, and the entire community of this state. He will spend decades of his life, and perhaps the remainder of his life, in prison for his actions.”
But the state constitution, Earls wrote, “does not permit us to ignore his potential for change. He cannot be deprived the opportunity to demonstrate that he has become someone different than the person he was when he was seventeen years old and at his worst.”
For more about this case, read this Newsline story.
The post North Carolina appeals court orders resentencing for man convicted of murder as teen appeared first on NC Newsline.
