Hairston v. Idaho
Annotate this CaseJames Hairston was sentenced to death after a jury convicted him of two counts of first-degree murder in connection with the deaths of William and Dalma Fuhriman. Hairston was about nineteen and a half when he killed the Fuhrimans. In this, his fourth post-conviction petition, Hairston argued his sentence was unconstitutional because: (1) he was under the age of twenty-one at the time of the offense; and (2) the trial court failed to give adequate consideration to the mitigating factors that had to be considered with youthful defendants. The district court dismissed Hairston’s first claim after holding that he failed to show that evolving standards of decency prohibited imposing the death penalty for offenders between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one. The court dismissed Hairston’s second claim after finding that there was no basis to extend the special sentencing considerations that have been specifically limited to juvenile defendants under eighteen to those under twenty-one. Finding no reversible error in those judgments, the Idaho Supreme Court affirmed.
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