United States v. Riley Briones, Jr.

FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, No. 16-10150 Plaintiff-Appellee, D.C. No. v. 2:96-cr-00464-

DLR-

RILEY BRIONES, JR., AKA Unknown Spitz, Defendant-Appellant. OPINION

On Remand from the United States Supreme Court

Argued and Submitted September 22, 2021 Pasadena, California

Filed December 6, 2021

Before: Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain and Johnnie B. Rawlinson, Circuit Judges, and David A. Ezra, * District Judge.

Opinion by Judge O’Scannlain

* The Honorable David A. Ezra, United States District Judge for the District of Hawaii, sitting by designation. SUMMARY **

Criminal

On remand from the United States Supreme Court, and further remand from the en banc court, the three-judge panel affirmed the district court’s imposition of a sentence of life without possibility of parole (LWOP) for crimes committed by Riley Briones, Jr. while a juvenile.

This court affirmed Briones’s original life sentence in 1998. Following the Supreme Court’s decisions in Miller v. Alabama, 567 U.S. 460 (2012) (holding that the Eighth Amendment…