Juvenile lifer seeks reprieve amid broader push for leniency
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) — Shortly after Riley Briones Jr. arrived in federal prison, he cut his long, braided hair in a symbolic death of his old self.
As a leader of a violent gang and just shy of 18, Briones drove the getaway car in a robbery turned deadly on the Salt River-Pima Maricopa Indian Community outside Phoenix in 1994. He was convicted of murder and given a mandatory sentence of life without parole.
In prison, he has been baptized a Christian, ministers to other inmates who call him Brother Briones, got his GED and has a spotless disciplinary record, his attorneys say in their latest bid to get the now 45- year- old’s sentence cut short.
“He’s clearly on the side of the line where he should be walking free,” said his attorney, Easha Anand.
The U.S. Supreme Court opened the door for that possibility with a 2012 ruling that said only the rare, irredeemable juvenile offender should serve life in prison. Over the past decade, most of the 39 defendants in federal cases who received that sentence have gotten a reprieve and are serving far fewer years behind bars.
Briones is among those whose life sentences have been upheld. His attorneys attorneys recently petitioned the full 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to give Briones another chance to reduce it.
At the same time, more than 60 legal experts and scholars have asked the federal government to cap sentences for juvenile offenders at 30 years, create a committee to review life sentences in the future and reconsider its stance in Briones’ case.
Prosecutors in Briones’ case have until May to respond to the latest petition. They’ve previously acknowledged he’s improved in prison and ultimately expressed remorse but say that’s not worthy of early release because he has minimized his role in the “Eastside Crips Rolling 30s” and its crimes that terrorized Salt River amid a surge of gang violence on Native American reservations in the 1990s.
Briones’ prison sentence started in 1997 after he was convicted in the death of Brian Patrick Lindsay, a Northern Arizona University student who was home for the summer and working a solo shift at a Subway restaurant.
Briones drove four other gang members to the restaurant on May 15, 1994, and waited outside. Lindsay was preparing sandwiches when one of the gang members went outside to talk to Briones, came back inside and shot Lindsay in the face. The shooter pumped more bullets into Lindsay as he lay on the floor.
The gang took the food and a bank bag with $100.
Prosecutors said the murder was the most egregious of the violent crimes that Briones helped plot and carry out on the reservation about 15 miles (24 kilometers) from Phoenix. But there were others that demonstrated a “murderous, unrepentant and unapologetic attitude,” they said, including drive- by shootings and fires set at rival gang members’ homes.
Briones also was convicted of arson, tampering with a witness and assault with a dangerous weapon. Three of his co-defendants in Lindsay’s death were sentenced to life in prison. One cooperated with authorities and received a lesser term.