State v. Smith
Annotate this CaseIn 1983, when he was sixteen years old, Defendant was convicted of burglary and kidnapping. The court imposed the mandatory sentence of life imprisonment for the kidnapping and a term of five to twenty years’ imprisonment for the burglary. In 2013, Defendant filed a pro se motion to correct his sentence, arguing that his life sentence was illegal under the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in Graham v. Florida, in which the Court held that the imposition of life without parole on a juvenile offender who did not commit homicide is unconstitutional. The district court dismissed Defendant’s motion for lack of jurisdiction because it was not brought under a recognized procedure under Nebraska law and because the sentence was currently valid. The Supreme Court affirmed, holding that because Defendant failed to timely assert his Graham v. Florida claim under the Nebraska Postconviction Act, the trial court lacked jurisdiction to consider Defendant’s motion and did not err in dismissing it without reaching its merit.
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