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.

They cited the 2012 landmark U.S. Supreme Court case of Miller v. Alabama that struck down mandatory life sentences without parole for two 14-year-olds. They also cited Montgomery v. Louisiana, in which the U.S. Supreme Court held that states are constitutionally required to give retroactive consideration to new rules, such as that issued in the Alabama case.

Gutman countered that the Oregon Supreme Court found that Kinkel's sentence did not violate the Eighth Amendment's ban against cruel and unusual punishment after considering the breadth and severity of his crimes.

The state Supreme Court considered Kinkel killed four people over two days and wounded almost two dozen classmates with an intent to kill them. It also considered his schizoaffective disorder – a condition "that was not a function of his youth,'' but one that the sentencing judge ruled was an incurable illness, Gutman wrote.

"In short, there is no reason for this Court to review these issues in this case where petitioner has not established that the Oregon Supreme Court committed an error,'' Gutman wrote.

How the Miller ruling would apply to a juvenile sentenced to a lengthy aggregate sentence stemming from multiple criminal convictions may be worthy of U.S. Supreme Court review, but Kinkel's case is not the case for that, Oregon's solicitor general argued.

The state Supreme Court had considered factors that the Miller case identified, such as Kinkel's youth, but still found the sentence constitutional, Gutman wrote. He quoted from the state Supreme Court ruling, which read, "Given the nature and the number of the crimes that petitioner committed, we are hard pressed to say that his aggregate sentence is constitutionally disproportionate, even taking his youth into account.''

Attorneys Thaddeus Betz, of Bend, and Marsha Levick, of the nationally recognized Juvenile Law Center, are representing Kinkel.

They've argued that Kinkel never got an opportunity to show he's not "permanently incorrigible" before the state essentially imposed a sentence of life without the possibility of parole. They contend Kinkel suffered from a severe mental illness, paranoid schizophrenia, and depression at the time of his crimes, which played a significant role in the shootings. Kinkel wrote in his petition to the U.S. Supreme Court that he was delusional and hallucinating when he committed his crimes.

-- Maxine Bernstein

mbernstein@oregonian.com

503-221-8212

@maxoregonian