Since the Oregon Supreme Court found that Kipland P. Kinkel’s nearly 112-year sentence reflected his “irreparable corruption rather than the transience of youth,” it shouldn’t be overturned, a state appellate lawyer wrote to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Oregon Solicitor General Benjamin Gutman filed the brief this month in response to Kinkel’s August petition to the nation’s high court for a review of his sentence. The court will consider the case against a backdrop of increasing scrutiny of life sentences for juveniles.
Kinkel was 15 when he fatally shot his parents in their Springfield home on May 20, 1998, before killing two students and wounding 24 others the next morning at Thurston High School. Kinkel pleaded no contest to four counts of murder and 26 counts of attempted murder. He was sentenced to 25 years for his four homicides and nearly 87 years for the wounding of 24 others and attempted murder of a police detective.
He’s now 36 and an inmate at the Oregon State Correctional Institution.
In his petition, Kinkel and his lawyers argued that the Oregon Supreme Court got it wrong earlier this year when it upheld Kinkel’s sentence of essentially life in prison. They argued that Kinkel and his lawyers at his sentencing never got an opportunity to show he could be rehabilitated.
