Carmen Briones holds up photos of her husband, Riley Briones Jr., who is serving life in prison, on Feb. 22, 2022, in Anthem, Ariz. Riley Briones’ attorneys are asking a federal appeals court for another chance to argue his sentence should be cut short based on improvements he’s made behind bars since being convicted in the 1994 death of Brian Patrick Lindsay when Briones was 17. (AP Photo/Felicia Fonseca)
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 the 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.
Meanwhile, 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.
But the move toward greater leniency has been gradual and not without resistance.
Briones is among those whose life sentences have been upheld in recent years, though he still has another chance.
Prosecutors in his case have staunchly opposed a reduced term. They argue despite Briones’ improvements, he minimized his role in the gang and its crimes that terrorized Salt River amid an explosion of gang violence on Native American reservations in the 1990s.
Briones began serving prison time in 1997 for the death of Brian Patrick Lindsay, a Northern Arizona University honors student who was home for the summer and had picked up a solo shift at a Subway sandwich shop.
Briones drove four others from the notorious “Eastside Crips Rolling 30s” gang to the restaurant on May 15, 1994, one of whom was armed with a 9 mm pistol. Lindsay was preparing food they ordered when one of the gang members went outside to talk to Briones, came back inside and suddenly shot Lindsay in the face. He pumped more bullets into Lindsay as he lay bleeding on the floor.
They had planned the robbery to get cash for guns, prosecutors wrote in court documents. They weren’t able to open the cash register but took a bank bag with $100 and the food the dying clerk had prepared.
Briones instructed another gang member to kill a maintenance man whom they saw earlier clearing the sidewalk, but they couldn’t find him, court documents state.
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Source: https://apnews.com/article/us-supreme-court-phoenix-406b9a163a073518cbaba0079b83f1ce
