Kipland Kinkel, known as Kip, was 15 years old in May 1998, when he killed his parents in Springfield, Oregon, on May 20 and, the following day, killed Ben Walker and Mikael Nickolauson at a high school in the same town. Twenty-five other people were injured at the school. The two days produced two separate sets of crimes, and the court dealt with them together.
On September 24, 1999, Kinkel pleaded guilty to four counts of murder and 26 counts of attempted murder, giving up a possible insanity defense on the eve of jury selection. On November 10, 1999, the Lane County Circuit Court sentenced him to an aggregate of 111 years and eight months. The sentence has been the subject of appeals ever since, because he was a juvenile when he committed the offenses and the United States Supreme Court has since restricted life sentences without parole for people under 18.
On May 20, 1998, Kinkel's father and mother were killed in Springfield, a city in Lane County at the southern end of Oregon's Willamette Valley. The following day, May 21, two people were killed at a high school in the same city, and twenty-five others were hurt.
The four murder counts to which he later pleaded cover his parents and the two people killed at the school. The 26 counts of attempted murder concern the school. The family killings and the school killings were sentenced together, and the later appeals speak of a single aggregate term.
Jury selection was set for September 27, 1999. Three days earlier, on September 24, Kinkel pleaded guilty to the lesser counts of murder and attempted murder and gave up the insanity defense. The agreement set out the range within which the sentencing judge would act. The state would recommend concurrent 25-year terms for the four murder counts, and both sides agreed to minimum terms of seven and a half years for each attempted murder count. The judge would decide whether the sentences ran together or one after another, so that the possible total ran from 25 to 220 years.
The sentencing hearing in the Lane County Circuit Court began on November 2, 1999, before the trial judge, and lasted six days. The state asked for the maximum of 220 years. The defense argued that Kinkel was mentally ill and asked for leniency; defense experts testified that he had a psychotic disorder, and the state called no psychiatric witnesses.
The judge held that protection of the public outweighed the possible rehabilitation of the defendant. He explained his reasoning from the bench: "We cannot predict what advances medical science will make in the treatment of whatever mental illness he has." He also said that, "improperly or incompletely treated, he is and remains dangerous."
The judge imposed concurrent 25-year terms on the four murder counts. On each of the 26 attempted murder counts the presumptive term was 90 months; he ordered that 50 months of each run concurrently and 40 months consecutively, with the consecutive portions stacked on the 25-year term. Twenty-six consecutive portions of 40 months come to 87 years, and with the 25 years they give the aggregate of 111 years and eight months.
Kinkel was 17 at the time of sentencing.
In 2013, after the United States Supreme Court decided Miller v. Alabama (2012), Kinkel's lawyers returned to court in Oregon. On September 12, 2013, a circuit court judge in Salem ruled that the 112-year sentence did not violate the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment and rejected the argument that the federal rulings against mandatory life without parole for juveniles applied. The judge also refused to set aside the 87 years attached to the attempted murder counts, which the defense had argued fell under the Supreme Court's ruling on non-homicide offenses by juveniles.
In 2016 the Oregon Court of Appeals, in Kinkel v. Persson, 276 Or App 427, declined to shorten the sentence. It held that his Miller claim was procedurally barred because he had raised the same arguments at sentencing and on direct appeal.
On May 10, 2018, the Oregon Supreme Court decided Kinkel v. Persson, 363 Or 1, by a vote of six to one. One member of the court dissented. The court held that, even if a statutory bar did not apply, the Eighth Amendment claim failed on the merits. It found that "the facts and the sentencing court's findings" placed Kinkel within "the narrow class of juveniles who, as Miller recognized, could be sentenced to life without the possibility of parole." The opinion also observed that the case "poses a different issue from the issue in Miller."
The United States Supreme Court denied certiorari in 2019 (139 S. Ct. 789).
In March 2021, Kinkel's attorneys filed a petition in the United States District Court for the District of Oregon, arguing that his plea was not voluntary and that the sentence was unconstitutional. The petition, brought under 28 U.S.C. section 2254, raised seven grounds for relief, and the respondent was the superintendent of the Oregon institution holding him.
On January 6, 2022, the district judge denied the amended petition on all seven grounds and denied a motion to expand the record. She granted a certificate of appealability on Grounds Three, Four and Five and denied one on Grounds One, Two, Six and Seven. Ground Four argued that the sentence was a de facto life sentence imposed without proper consideration of his youth, under Miller and Montgomery.
Kinkel moved for reconsideration, arguing that the court had relied wrongly on Jones v. Mississippi, 141 S. Ct. 1307 (2021), which the Supreme Court decided after the Oregon Supreme Court ruled in his case. On June 16, 2022, the district court denied the motion. It held that Jones clarified Miller and did not create a new governing principle, and that, even setting Jones aside, the Oregon Supreme Court had not unreasonably applied Miller. The sentencing court, it said, had discretion to consider Kinkel's youth, had considered mitigating evidence, and was not required to make specific findings about his youth or permanent incorrigibility.
Kinkel appealed to the Ninth Circuit (No. 22-35096, Kinkel v. Long). His reply brief, filed on March 22, 2023, argued that the murder sentence was mandatory under Oregon law as amended in 1999 and that the 87 years for non-homicide offenses amounted to a de facto life sentence barred by Graham.
On March 6, 2023, the Oregon Board of Parole and Post-Prison Supervision denied Kinkel's request for a murder review hearing. The board's chair wrote that "the board can't grant him any relief because he's not serving any life sentences for murder," and that he would in any case have served the 25-year murder term in full before he could become eligible. His petition to the Oregon Supreme Court was denied in May 2023 by a one-line ruling of the Chief Justice. The Ninth Circuit appeal remained pending at that time.
As of May 2023 the sentence had not been changed, and he had received neither clemency nor resentencing.
Miller v. Alabama (2012) barred mandatory life without parole for offenders under 18; Montgomery v. Louisiana later made that rule retroactive, and Graham v. Florida had limited life without parole for juveniles convicted of non-homicide offenses. In State v. Link, decided in March 2021, the Oregon Supreme Court held that Miller's individualized-sentencing requirement did not apply to a sentence under which the defendant could petition for conversion to life with the possibility of parole after 30 years, because the sentence gave a meaningful opportunity for release. Kinkel's sentence is a term of years, and the dispute has been whether a term of 111 years and eight months works as a life sentence for a person who was 15 and whether the sentencing court weighed his youth adequately.
The convictions rest on his own pleas and are not contested. What remains in dispute is legal: whether the aggregate term is a de facto life sentence for a juvenile offender, whether the sentencing court gave his youth the weight that Miller requires, and whether his pleas were voluntary, which the 2021 federal petition alleged. The Oregon Supreme Court and the district court have rejected those arguments; the Ninth Circuit appeal was pending in May 2023.
May 20, 1998: Kinkel's parents are killed in Springfield, Oregon.
May 21, 1998: Two people are killed at a high school in Springfield and 25 others are injured.
September 24, 1999: He pleads guilty to four counts of murder and 26 counts of attempted murder.
November 2, 1999: Six-day sentencing hearing begins in the Lane County Circuit Court.
November 10, 1999: Sentenced to an aggregate of 111 years and eight months.
September 12, 2013: A circuit court judge in Salem rejects his cruel-and-unusual-punishment challenge.
2016: Oregon Court of Appeals declines to shorten the sentence.
May 10, 2018: Oregon Supreme Court affirms, six to one.
2019: United States Supreme Court denies certiorari.
March 2021: Federal habeas petition filed.
January 6, 2022: District court denies the petition and grants a certificate of appealability on three grounds.
June 16, 2022: Motion for reconsideration denied.
March 6, 2023: Parole board denies a murder review hearing.
May 2023: Oregon Supreme Court denies his petition; Ninth Circuit appeal pending.