Casiano v. Commissioner of Correction

Summary

The dissent would reject retroactive application of the juvenile-sentencing rule to the petitioner because a fifty-year term ending at age sixty-six is not the functional equivalent of life without parole and because the rule is not a watershed procedural rule. It reasons that Connecticut's sentencing statutes define life imprisonment as sixty years and that the petitioner's presentence investigation already addressed the relevant characteristics of youth. Justices Zarella and Robinson dissent from the majority's contrary conclusions regarding both sentence equivalence and retroactivity.