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Veal v. State

The trial court erred in sentencing the juvenile defendant to life without parole for malice murder without first making any sort of distinct determination on the record that the defendant was irreparably corrupt or permanently incorrigible, as was necessary to put him in the narrow class of juvenile murderers for whom an life without parole sentence is proportional under the Eighth Amendment.

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Appellant Robert Veal challenges his convictions for numerous crimes, including murder and rape, committed in the course of two armed robberies on November 22, 2010. He contends that the evidence at trial as to one set of crimes was insufficient to corroborate the testimony of his accomplice; we reject that contention and affirm all of the convictions. Appellant also contends that the two counts charging him with criminal street gang activity should have merged for sentencing; we reject that contention as well, although we have identified a merger error made in Appellant’s favor on an armed robbery count, which the trial court should correct on remand. Finally, Appellant, who was 17 years old at the time of the crimes, contends that the trial court erred in sentencing him to life without parole for malice murder. Based on the United States Supreme Court’s recent decision in Montgomery v. Louisiana, 136 SCt 718 2016, we agree that Appellant’s LWOP sentence must be vacated, and we therefore remand the case for resentencing on the murder count.1

1. Viewed in the light most favorable to the verdicts, the evidence at trial showed the following. On the night of the crimes, Lisa McGraw and her boyfriend, Charles Boyer, returned from a trip to a convenience store to her apartment complex in the Virginia Highlands neighborhood of Atlanta. They were walking toward her apartment when Boyer returned to his car to retrieve something he had forgotten. As McGraw continued toward the apartment, she felt a gun placed to her head and heard a voice from behind ordering her not to turn around. McGraw realized that two men were behind her, and that a third man was with Boyer.

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