testified on his behalf he was sentenced to seventy seven years in prison i want to break those down very quickly for the court he received twenty three years for five firearms charges two years for statutory burglary two years for an armed attempted robbery five years each for three robberies and thirty five years for the first degree murder so that quick background there are just two questions for the court to resolve this morning the first is whether the u s supreme court's decision in miller vs alabama serves to invalidate the first guilty plea and a new trial we submit that the answer that question is no under the u s supreme court's decision in braver's united states and this court's decision in dingell versus stevenson and then the second question for the court to consider is whether miller instead of titles mr contrast to a new sentencing hearing which is what the district court held in this case we would say the answer that question is also no in the district court should be reversed because are essentially five things this court would have to find in order to affirm the courts an not just mandatory sentencing schemes the third is that miller applies to terminate your sentences not just life sentences and if you also aggregate the term of your senses together to get that issue the force that the individual with that said what i would posit to the court that the simplest way to solve this case is to look at first the guilty plea issue particularly with versa stevenson which involved roper versus simmons where a defendant from south carolina said that he was threatened with the death penalty that was struck down by roe present plight to juveniles and that he said his plea was unconstitutional coerced because he was threatened with that sentence and this court looked at brady versus united states and said that's that's just not possible well we don't we don't apply relief in this case because it seems to me that the judge this court judge realized he couldn't really overturn the guilty plea so we would submit that he didn't raise the similar claim but if he did i think there are really two easy ish pass for the court to get out the narrowes less a mandatory one and therefore he's not entitled to really think another way the court can go is to say that miller on its own terms the holding of miller is we do not allow mandatory life without parole for juvenile homicide offenders as i think i put it in brief it's the legislature can't make that judgment that every juvenile can ever be released from prison that you have to have the opportunity to come to court and explain why he was in transit immaturity and other characteristics mean that you should be given a chance to obtain release so the court could look at that and say this  absolutely discretionary it's discretionary under virginia law for first degree murder he got anywhere from twenty million might have expanded miller a little without sort of minimizing the mandatory aspect and focusing more on so if the court thinks we think that expand miller and every direct review case going forward everybody's work has to pull in a t k it's like trying to understand what the new rule constitutional law is and so that leads to my second point which is if if one gun really did expand miller striking for how clear it is about what it's hold is it says we we forbid mandatory life without parole the reason why we do that is because by making it mandatory you take away the opportunity for ever for any juvenile who explained why i don't deserve the sent opportunity for them in those cases so we're gonna apply the logic here that you can't tell a juvenile you will never get out of prison if you didn't give them a chance to come forward explain why that shouldn't be the result is your argument on if we get to discuss effective life sentence is it because is it because of a junior courts have said that although it looks like it's mandatory it really isn't mandatory or is it the geriatric under any circumstances makes it not those offenders are not eligible for release that age sixty and so in jones what have you supreme court said is look it's always been the law in virginia as a matter of virginia law all these judges have always had the authority to suspend a life sentence at whole or in part and a court actually there's been some allegations in other cases where dozen is never allowed or nobody's ever had a suspended sentence in virginia it's provided for by law and at least one court has done it and we would say that jones is binding on this court as a matter of virginia's sentencing  trying to get your take on what what the virginia low mandatory life is i understand what the court said which is it looks likes minatory but it never it isn't and never has been but that was clarified looks like where doesn't really mean comes out after the fact that sets of going back to the first question of whether or not you actually threatened with the mandatory sentence should clarify our position be no he was because jones makes clear that there is no mandatory life without  e in virginia and then made it clear when it made it clear when that's right judge made even if you took it took it at face value that is that was true thought that was true we would still w you and i believe that jason's personal characteristics that you refer to judge are relevant as highlighted by the line of cases that started with roper and continue through graham miller and also would like to point out this is not a brady case well this is not brady this case should be guided by the analysis and brady in which the court said that the voluntariness of a plea can be determined only by considering all  relevant circumstances brady was a mature competent adult in for control of his melt mental faculties advised by competent counsel those were his circumstances chasen was to be wilbur immature sixteen year old boy unable to understand even what was happening much less to assist his attorneys with his defense those were chastened circumstances that is a defacto life sentence the guiding principle i asked the court to apply in this case was stated in montgomery a court has no authority to leave in place a conviction or s violates a substitute room montgomery makes clear that the holding of miller is a substantive rule and the holding of miller is that a matter of constitutional law a sentencing court may not treat a teenage boy as a miniature adult male or mcgovern do allow life sentences for juvenile homo side of printers but only if the sentencing court takes into account the distinctive characteristics review the judge at the sentencing hearing said when you put in a gun in your hand you go out here to use that the weapon to intimidate rob murder your grown you are fully grown that's page four sixty  starting at the bottom of the same page he said this behavior this evidence is not about a child and he repeated this evidence is not about the child let me ask you this if let's say he did not take those factors into consideration isn't it true though that he gave them a sentence if you assume seventy seven years as a life which is another argument that could be made one way or the other but let's assume it's a life sentence  and and we said that effectively because it's not seldom granted at least some statistics so or we said now there is no really an analogous release in the supreme court reversed on precedent which angel maybe the standard review actually is stated correctly in both of the principal briefs it is to no vote did the court commit error neither more nor less and i submit that the court should follow the reasoning of the bike for the reasons stated in that case geriatric crudely release in virginia is standard laws it can be denied arbitrarily or her no reason at all at the first stop of the process which the court in angel did not even discuss skip right over at the second step we get past the first up i would agree with angel was correctly decided but overlook the fact that at the first the parole authority has in the words block unconstrained discretion fewer than five percent of all geriatric relief petitions are granted in virginia more than ninety five percent are denied on the ground of and i quote irretrievably you crave if you are sure that he was going to get geriatric reprieve or whatever they call it at age sixty then you don't you don't think that's an effective life sentence you don't think his serving to age sixty then he has no claim under miller is accurate if if he were had a fair anticipation of relief at age has any wart equated eight cents a term sentence to be equivalent to a life sentence for these purposes a number of courts have done so this court has not reached that  mckinley the ninth circuit in the better case and what did they include what it was that they have a number they included or what they say they addressed the facts of those cases in one case two hundred fifty four years another it was two times fifty consecutive so those are pretty clearly beyond any agree actually i mean the only reason i ask and i'm not sure it's an appropriate thing to get into but if he can earn fifteen percent  when the rationale of irretrievably depraved character is applied to prisoners who were juveniles at the time of their conviction that is squarely contrary to the reasons underlying the circumstances that found it mr contreras endured in the circumstances that led to his being in the position that he was as you know the difficulty that we have is the scope of our review under at so can you give me the cleanest on the result that you want that does not does not have unfortunate collateral damage you see what i'm asking me what's what in your view would be the simplest most straightforward way  to agree with it for us to agree with the district court if we were to do so for the paper he did not apply in this case there is no state court adjudication on the question presented question these three wrecked line is that this is a defacto life sentence it was issued not only without consideration of these distinctive characteristics of  points on the bottle first on the side of the case the way i understand their response brief where sort of start the argument this morning is that effectively no juvenile can really plead guilty because they all suffer from transit use in immaturity and mental capacit equivalent to an adult supreme court has never held that miller didn't touch on that issue really all that seems to me a far cry from this case with respect to the miller sentencing issues i'm going to going to kind of try to work through these in order and i want to start the legislature decided that you would spend the rest of your life in prison and no judge has any authority to do anything different for you this case is simply a far cry from that we're not only we're not talking about mandatory sense at all in this case first degree murder carry twenty burglary he got two years so this case is just nothing like the defense that issue at miller or in montgomery with respect to angel in geriatric release all the way we would say the twenty to fifty four d difference doesn't apply here we don't have an underlying concurrence where she made the point that she joined the court's opinion on the understanding that angel is binding on the virginia parole board that the ordinary considerations for parole apply every factor that your every step of the jury after release process so angel does control as a matter of life sentences miller doesn't speak about the fact of life nor speaks about mentor life without parole so this court would have to make the extension in order to even reach the issue about whether there is a de facto life sentence here and i would submit that there is still be buried question about whether we're talking about thirty five year sentence he received for the murder or if we're talking about the seventy seven somewhere let's assume he got seventy seven years as opposed to thirty rock just with murder does he can he earned good time credits don't mean that was my last