Wyoming Supreme Court Upholds Lengthy Murder Sentence for Casper Teen

The Wyoming Supreme Court has affirmed that a 42- to 75-year prison sentence for a Casper teen who pleaded guilty to second-degree murder is constitutional and does not violate state law, rejecting arguments that the punishment was unusually harsh for a juvenile offender.

Eavan Castaner, 15 at the time, admitted to shooting and killing his ex-girlfriend, 17-year-old Lene’a Brown, at a Casper park in May 2024. He pleaded guilty to second-degree murder after initially being charged with first-degree murder. At sentencing, Natrona County District Court Judge Dan Forgey imposed a 42- to 75-year term, meaning Castaner could be in his late 50s before his first chance at release.

Castaner’s attorneys appealed, arguing the sentence was effectively worse than what he might have received for first-degree murder—a quirk in Wyoming law. In 2013, following the U.S. Supreme Court’s Miller v. Alabama decision, lawmakers changed first-degree murder sentencing for juveniles to allow parole eligibility after 25 years. But they left second-degree murder untouched, with a range of 20 years to life.

The high court ruled Tuesday that Castaner’s sentence “falls within the permissible statutory limit set by the Legislature for second-degree murder.” It also found that the 2013 law allowing juveniles a chance at parole after 25 years “applies only to juvenile offenders who received a life sentence,” which Castaner did not.

“To apply the statute to a juvenile homicide offender who received a term of years sentence, we would have to ignore the plain language of the statute,” the decision states.

Ryan Semerad, Castaner’s attorney, told WyoFile he strongly disagrees with the ruling. “By affirming this sentence in the way that they did, a juvenile who is convicted of a lesser crime than first-degree murder could receive functionally and practically a much worse sentence, and we think that’s wrong.”

He said he is considering filing a petition for rehearing and would welcome legislative fixes to the statute.

David Henrickson, Brown’s father, told the court at sentencing, “I scream inside all day long.”