Ohio rapist handed 112-year prison term as teen appeals sentence

Brandon Moore, 22, was 15 at time of the crime. Brandon Moore, 22, was 15 at time of the crime. Photo: Associated Press Photo: Associated Press Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Ohio rapist handed 112-year prison term as teen appeals sentence 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

COLUMBUS, Ohio — A 112-year prison sentence imposed on a convicted rapist should be overturned because it amounts to an unconstitutional life term for crimes he committed at age 15, the inmate’s lawyer argued Wednesday before Ohio’s highest court.

Brandon Moore was tried as an adult and convicted in the 2001 armed kidnapping, robbery and gang rape of a 22-year-old Youngstown State University student.

The woman was abducted as she arrived for an evening work shift and was repeatedly raped at gunpoint by Moore and an accomplice before being released, according to court records. Moore, now 29, received his sentence in 2008.

In 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that teenagers may not be locked up for life without chance of parole if they haven’t killed anyone. By a 5-4 vote in the case of a Florida man serving time for armed robberies when he was a teen, the court said the Constitution requires that young people serving life sentences must at least be considered for release and the chance of rehabilitation.

At issue is whether that ruling applies to Moore, whose prison term consists of multiple sentences stacked on top of one another.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision made it clear that a juvenile’s sentence must provide “meaningful opportunity for release,” Rachel Bloomekatz, an attorney for Moore, told the Ohio Supreme Court on Wednesday.

What a judge can’t do, she argued, is rule that a juvenile “is never fit to re-enter society from the outset.”

Prosecutors in Mahoning County argue that the multiple sentences make Moore’s punishment constitutional, even though they “may preclude the possibility of release during the juvenile offender’s life,” according to an August filing with the court.

The U.S. Supreme Court case specifically dealt with juveniles sentenced to life without parole for a crime not involving a homicide, prosecutors argue. It was “speaking to a life sentence, a direct life sentence, not an aggregate sentence,” Ralph Rivera, a Mahoning County assistant prosecutor, told justices Wednesday.