Wyoming Supreme Court Signals Openness to Limiting Excessive Punishments

Kyle C. Barry is director of the State Law Research Initiative (SLRI). SLRI filed an amicus brief in support of the defendant in Hicks v. State before the Wyoming Supreme Court.

The Wyoming Supreme Court on Tuesday signaled it may join a growing list of state high courts that have expanded state constitutional rights against the harshest criminal punishments, especially life prison terms imposed on youth and younger adults. 

The court heard arguments in Hicks v. State, which asks whether Wyoming’s right against “cruel or unusual” punishments prohibits automatic-life-without-parole prison terms for people under age 21. The court wrestled with whether Wyoming’s constitution provides stronger rights than the federal Eighth Amendment’s “cruel and unusual” clause. Noting that people’s liberty was at stake, multiple justices questioned the extraordinary deference the Eighth Amendment typically affords even the most draconian sentencing laws — and suggested that state constitutional limits on punishment are “fundamental rights” that warrant the same heightened judicial enforcement as the rights to free speech or equal protection.

“If we’re taking a state constitutional law primacy approach, and there is an assertion that a [sentencing law] violates a fundamental right . . . then there’s an opportunity for a different state constitutional analysis,” said Justice Lynne Boomgaarden. “So why would we pigeonhole this into an Eighth Amendment analysis?”

This line of questioning — which reemerged throughout argument — reveals a frustrating contradiction at the heart of Eighth Amendment case law: Both state and federal constitutions provide a fundamental right to liberty, and there is perhaps no greater burden on personal liberty than life-long imprisonment with no chance of release. Yet instead of forcing the state to justify such extreme punishment as necessary, federal courts have, for the most part, been hands-off. While state supreme courts cannot fix federal law, at least some members of Wyoming’s five-justice court recognized that state constitutional law, on which they have final say, provides an opportunity to chart a better course.

Chris Hicks was 19 years old when he was convicted of first-degree murder and automatically given life in prison without any chance of release. Had Hicks been just two years younger, there would be no dispute that his sentence is unconstitutional. The U.S. Supreme Court decided that in Miller v. Alabama, a 2012 case that banned mandatory life-without-parole sentences for people under 18. Miller didn’t abolish all life-without-parole sentences for children but said they should be “rare” and imposed only after a hearing in which judges consider the inherently “mitigating qualities of youth.” The Court explained that sentences to forever languish in prison, if imposed at all, should be reserved for only the most dangerous and blameworthy offenders. Yet an ever-growing body of neurological evidence shows that children and young adults are inherently less culpable. They are impulsive and prone to peer pressure — and, the Court noted, have a greater capacity to change as they mature, even if they have committed horrific crimes. Given this scientific reality, sending kids to die in prison based on their conviction alone risks imposing permanent punishment on people fully capable of rehabilitating and reentering society.

Since Miller, the U.S. Supreme Court has grown more hostile to civil rights that limit policing and punishment. But state supreme courts have used their own constitutions to push Miller to its logical conclusions. By 2016, both the Massachusetts and Iowa high courts banned all life without parole sentences for youth, mandatory or otherwise. They reasoned that if virtually all children are capable of reform, then it is unreasonable to ask trial court judges to identify, at the time of sentencing, the rare few who are truly irredeemable and forever dangerous. That decision would be mere guesswork inevitably infected by the crime itself. 

In 2020, the Washington Supreme Court became the first to extend Miller to all young adults under age 21. The court found that the same scientific evidence in Miller shows that brains continue developing into one’s 20s, often until age 25. Because “there is no meaningful cognitive difference” between a 17-year-old and people ages 18 through 20, “there is no constitutional difference either,” the court wrote. The Michigan Supreme Court reached the same conclusion this year, while last year the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court went further and abolished all life without parole sentences for people under 21. 

It might be unexpected for some that a politically conservative state like Wyoming would be the next state to extend protections against extreme sentencing — until one considers its remarkable constitutional history and text. While the federal Constitution has one provision that limits criminal punishments (the Eighth Amendment), the Wyoming Constitution, adopted in 1889, has three. Section 14 bars “cruel or unusual” punishments, a deliberate textual choice that alone suggests broader rights than the federal “cruel and unusual” clause. Section 15 commands a “humane” penal code based on “reformation and prevention.” And Section 16 provides for “safe and comfortable prisons,” guarantees the “humane treatment of prisoners,” and prohibits treating people in jail “with unnecessary rigor.” Together, these suggest a constitutional commitment not just to prevent cruelty, but to affirmatively uphold the dignity even of those who commit the most serious crimes and to use the legal system not merely to punish but to “reform.” 

In 1898, with two delegates from Wyoming’s constitutional convention among its members, the Wyoming Supreme Court explained that “our constitution expressly adopts the humanitarian theory,” and therefore “the modern prison system . . . revolves around one central thought — the possibility of reformation.” The court continued: “The reformation of the prisoner is its one animating purpose.” 

That history puts in context several justices’ openness Tuesday to treating the right against excessive punishment as fundamental. They wondered why sending someone to prison shouldn’t trigger the same heightened judicial review as other fundamental rights deprivations, with the government required to show that a sentence is “narrowly tailored” to serve a “compelling interest.” 

“When you are talking about life and liberty you are talking about a fundamental right,” Chief Justice Kate Fox, who retires later this month, said to Hicks’s counsel, law professor Lauren McLane. “So what’s wrong with strict scrutiny?”

Even Justice John Fenn, who worried that striking down sentencing statutes might improperly interfere with legislative prerogatives, offered that treating “cruel or unusual” prohibitions like other fundamental rights could solve that problem. “If it was [infringement on] speech it would be a fundamental right,” and strict scrutiny review would apply, he said. But when it comes to the “cruel or unusual” clause, “we do not have a lot of precedent” guiding how courts enforce it. 

McLane reminded the court that rather than foster reformation as required by the state constitution, life without parole completely abandons it. She argued primarily that “cruelty” in Wyoming must be informed by the science showing that sending teenagers like Hicks to prison for life extinguishes the possibility of rehabilitation for people who are otherwise fully capable of it. 

Aside from some procedural objections, the state insisted that Wyoming’s constitution provides no greater rights than what Miller provided and that changing how young adults are punished is a job for the state legislature, not judges. “It’s common sense that a 20-year-old is not fully developed,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Reeves Jones conceded. But, she continued, only the legislature can decide if that warrants more lenient sentencing. 

Fox pushed back on that argument, pointing out that it would be cruel or unusual if, for example, the lawmakers imposed life without parole on 16 year olds. “At some point,” she said, “it becomes the court’s job to step in.”

The decision in this case could have profound national implications. While several state supreme courts have expanded rights against excessive punishment, none has explicitly treated them as fundamental rights subject to heightened “strict scrutiny” judicial review. If the Wyoming Supreme Court does so here, it could prompt other state supreme courts to follow suit, and we would finally see meaningful judicial review of the extreme sentences that continue to drive the national mass incarceration crisis. 

For Hicks, though, the goal is more personal — the chance for his release. “I believe that our beautiful state constitution has mercy in it,” his attorney McLane said in closing, “and that’s what I’m asking of you.”

Suggested Citation: Kyle C. Barry, Wyoming Supreme Court Signals Openness to Limiting Excessive Punishments, Sᴛᴀᴛᴇ Cᴏᴜʀᴛ Rᴇᴘᴏʀᴛ (May 14, 2025), https://statecourtreport.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/wyoming-supreme-court-signals-openness-limiting-excessive-punishments