As a youth peer specialist in the Wyoming maximum security prison, Chris Hicks spends his days helping younger inmates try to turn their lives around.
This means learning to take accountability for their actions as well as reprogramming their criminal minds.
He knows a thing or two about criminal minds and derailing one’s life at an early age.
At 38, Hicks has spent nearly half his life behind bars. He’s serving three consecutive life sentences without parole for his role in accessory role in two murders in Gillette in 2005 when he was 19.
He and two other teens had been coerced by their friend’s 42-year-old father to kill the man’s 16-year-old stepson who had accused him of sexually assaulting him as well as an 18-year-old associate the man said was a police informant.
In exchange, he promised to sort out a marijuana deal that had gone bad for Hicks and his co-conspirator.
Hicks didn’t pull the trigger or do the actual killing, but in Wyoming, aiding and abetting nets the same punishment as murder.
As it stands, Hicks will die in prison.
Age Of Adult Brain
Had he been a year younger, Hicks’ sentence would be deemed illegal under both federal and state laws that protect youth from serving life sentences.
The state of Wyoming defines youth as 18 and younger for the purpose of sentencing, but a new motion filed by a University of Wyoming professor would like to see that age raised to 21.
Lauren McClane, in collaboration with the university’s Defender Aid Clinic and Devon Petersen of Fleener Petersen Law, filed a motion to correct Hicks’ sentence in 6th District court in Campbell County in August.
The motion argues new neuroscience suggesting the human brain is not fully developed until a person’s late 20s, as well as evolving standards of decency and other protections afforded to Hicks under the state and federal constitutions.
McClane asserts that had this advance science been known at the time of Hicks’ trial, it would have provided mitigating factors that would have impacted his sentence.
Aging Out
Decades of legal precedents have drawn distinct boundaries on the ways that youth and adults are sentenced.
This includes the 2012 landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in Miller v. Alabama that deemed mandatory life sentences without the possibility of parole for teens 18 and younger unconstitutional based on the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution that protects citizens against excessive bail, fines and cruel and unusual punishments.
A year after the Miller filing, Wyoming followed suit, passing a law that abolished life without parole sentences for juveniles 18 and younger. The new law made it possible for youth to be eligible for parole after serving 25 years in prison.
McClane’s motion argues that the protections afforded under Miller be extended to people ages 21 and younger given that neuroscience not previously available now shows the age of adult to be much older than originally suggested.
The idea is not unprecedented. Other states like Illinois, Massachusetts and Washington have already done so in recent years based on emerging neuroscience and similar constitutional arguments.
Other states yet have enacted “second look” judicial policies to address lengthy mandatory sentences, which permit judges to review sentences after inmates have served a certain amount of time, but Wyoming has no such laws.
One of the rationales for passing these policies is to provide a mechanism to evaluate whether sentences imposed decades ago are on par with current sentencing policies and public sentiment.
McLane would argue that standards of decency over the past two decades have evolved in terms of the harshness of the penalties.
State Disagrees
In response to McClane’s motion, the state argues that Hicks’ sentence was not illegal because Hicks was 19 at the time of his arrest and sentencing and that the Miller ruling is clear on its definition of a youthful offender.
The nine-page response argues that Hicks failed to raise these constitutional issues in an earlier appeal and repeatedly stressed the fact that Hicks was 19 at the time of his crimes and there is no state or federal law making his sentence illegal among other points.
McClane refutes the state’s argument.
“We don’t need a new law,” McClane said. “It’s science that’s developed and informed our evolving standards of decency. They’ve changed over time, so it’s these standards of decency that inform his sentences are now illegal.”
McClane further notes that Wyoming’s Constitution dictates that the penal code be framed around humane principles of reformation and prevention.
“Part of what we're arguing is that none of these justifications are served by sentencing a 19-year-old to life without the possibility of parole, much like they're not served by sentencing a 17-year-old to life without the possibility of parole,” McLane said.
Hicks Not Innocent
During Hicks’ trial in 2006, Campbell County District Judge Michael “Nick” Deegan appeared mystified as to how Hicks could have just “fallen into this situation,” as stated in McClane’s motion.
The judge’s point was that Hicks had control over being an accessory to a crime and not someone innocent who had no clue what was going on.
Hicks can tick off a list of reasons of how he had fallen into the situation, beginning with his own bad judgement, mental health issues, lack of confidence and self-esteem, as well as large quantities of alcohol and marijuana he was using to tune out, he told Cowboy State Daily in a series of letters.
It’s fair to say Hicks was adrift when his path led him back to Gillette, where he encountered former high school friend, then-18-year-old Jacob Martinez, who invited Hicks to move into a trailer with he and some friends.
At the time, Hicks was homeless, and not for the first time.
Originally from Arizona, Hicks had moved with his parents to Gillette during high school, which didn’t go well.
Hicks had been angry about the move and bottled his emotions with the help of alcohol and marijuana.
Eventually, his dad kicked him out of the house at age 16, where he moved in with a friend and his family until eventually dropping out of school and getting a full-time job.
This didn’t sit well with the family, who asked him to leave. From there he couch-surfed with co-workers while also fathering a son when he was 17.
His life turned for the better at 18 when he joined the U.S. Army.
There, he said he found a purpose and responded well to strict regimen of discipline. Within a year, however, Hicks was medically discharged following an injury while training, which forced him out.
“I cannot put into words how devastated I was,” Hicks said in a letter. It was the beginning of the end.
Following his service, he returned to his parents’ home in Arizona, where they had since moved, and got a job as a metal fabricator. Even though things were going well, Hicks ultimately moved back to Gillette to be near his son.
At first, he got a job and moved in with a female friend, but when that didn’t work out, Hicks was once again homeless and continued his heavy drinking and marijuana use.
Fight Club
When he hooked up with Martinez, Hicks was living in his car and decided to take him up on his offer to move in with he and two other friends, 18-year-old Jeremy Forquer and Kent Proffit Jr.
Within weeks, Proffit’s father, Kent Proffit Sr., moved in with the teens after being released on bail pending his jury trial for sexually assaulting a 16-year-old stepson.
He denied these charges to the boys, and instead said he’d been arrested for dealing drugs and regaled the teens with stories from the drug underworld, Hicks said.
It wasn’t long before things got out of hand, Hicks said.
Hicks, who stuck with marijuana and booze, described a meth-crazed household with Proffit Sr. at the helm full of sleepless nights. He said the older Profitt became increasing paranoid and angry, and would find release by inviting neighborhood teens in for drugs and alcohol and encouraging them into fist fights for his own personal “fight club.”
He described the man as a “charismatic,” highly manipulative figure who created a cult-like environment engineered to exploit he and the other teens, who were susceptible given their youth and immaturity.
The Favor
When Hicks made a plan to bring a large amount of marijuana to Gillette, he asked Martinez for help selling it, according to court documents, but the plan “went bad.”
In turn, the elder Profitt told the teens he knew people “who owed him favors” and would iron it out for them, if they did him a favor.
First, they needed to kill Forquer because Profitt Sr. claimed the teen was working for the cops and would turn them in for selling drugs. The plan was for Hicks to demonstrate a chokehold on Forquer until he died.
When that didn’t work, Profitt Sr. directed Martinez to strangle him with a rope.
Profitt Sr. then asked Martinez to kill his stepson as well, who Martinez shot in his home with Hicks helping by opening the door for him.
In the end, Hicks was charged with one count of first-degree murder and two counts of conspiracy to commit murder and received three life sentences.
He was offered a plea deal of 20 years, he said, but his lawyer encouraged him to go to trial, where he received three consecutive life sentences without parole.
He had also faced the death penalty, but the jury took it off the table.
Both Profitt Sr. and Martinez are also serving life sentences at the Wyoming State Penitentiary while the 15-year-old was charged and has already been released from prison.
Kent Profitt Jr. was not indicted in the crimes.
Restorative Justice
Hicks has had nearly two decades to reflect on his actions and atone for his crimes.
There’s nothing he can do to go back and change what he did, so he instead focuses on his own rehabilitation and helping other teens in the prison’s Youthful Offender Transition Program.
Over the past 17 years, Hicks said he’s worked hard to better himself by participating in mental health and criminal thinking programs through the prison as well as higher education correspondence classes. He’s earned certificates in personal training and as a paralegal.
Looking back, he now sees how his own youth and immaturity led to his actions — or lack thereof — in stopping the events as they unfolded.
Colorado-based licensed psychologist Max Wachtel evaluated Hicks and declared that his mental state at the time of the crimes weighed heavily in his actions, according to a report filed with the motion, declaring Hicks “depressed, alone and highly dependent on others for his sense of self-worth.”
This does not excuse his behaviors, he noted, nor does it make him any less accountable for his crimes.
“Two innocent people lost their lives, and I don’t want to minimize my actions or cause more pain to the victims’ families,” Hicks said.
Rather, what he and his lawyers are asking is that the penalty be commensurate with his age at the time of his crimes and in keeping with the state’s penal goal of rehabilitation.
Along with Hicks, McClane estimates there are about a dozen Wyoming inmates serving life without parole sentences who committed their crimes before they were 21 who might be impacted by this decision.
What Happens Next?
With the state’s denial, the motion now hangs in the balance before Judge Stuart Healy III, who will either decide to rule on the matter or hand it up to the Wyoming Supreme Court.
McClane is first hoping there will be an evidentiary hearing, which she said is tentatively scheduled for mid-December.
In terms of her chances, McClane believes she’ll get a “robust” hearing in Healy’s court, but that it may get sent to the Wyoming Supreme Court for judgement.
Failing that, she may take it to the Wyoming Legislature where legislators could potentially change the laws.
Hicks, meanwhile, acknowledged that the motion is a longshot, but hopes that the science will be convincing on its own merits and youth up to 21 will be afforded the same considerations offered under the Miller judgement.
“Science is showing and informing the public that consequences for crimes need to be more proportional when underdeveloped youth are involved and stay within the evolving standards of decency,” he wrote.
Jen Kocher can be reached at jen@cowboystatedaily.com.
