The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected a request to take up an appeal from a Missouri man who was sentenced to 241 years in prison at the age of 16.
The court said Monday it would not consider the request from Bobby Bostic, who was sentenced after he was convicted on 18 counts, including robbery, attempted robbery, assault, kidnapping and other crimes.
He will not be eligible for parole until he is 112 years old.
Bostic, then 16, and another 18-year-old man robbed at gunpoint a group of six people who were delivering Christmas gifts to a needy family in St. Louis in 1995. Two people were shot in the course of the robbery.
Bostic and the man then forced a seventh woman into her car and drove off, robbing her before letting her go. The woman said she feared the other man was going to rape her, but said Bostic stopped him from doing so.
Lawyers for Bostic argued his sentence was unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment, citing the 2010 Supreme Court decision in Graham v. Florida.
In that case, the court found the Constitution “prohibits the imposition of a life without parole sentence on a juvenile offender who did not commit homicide.”
Missouri, Bostic’s lawyers said in their petition to the Supreme Court, “did exactly what Graham forbids: It decided at the outset that Petitioner, who committed only nonhomicide offenses as a 16 year old, will never be fit to rejoin society, no matter how successfully he demonstrates maturity and reform as an adult.”
