The boy, who has now turned 18, carried out two separate murder assignments in Solna in May 2023. First, he shot and injured two people with a pistol, two weeks later he murdered a man with a large number of shots from an automatic carbine.
In the Court of Appeal, the teenager was sentenced to nine years and ten months in prison for the two crimes.
The boy appealed to the Supreme Court and requested to be sentenced to four years of closed youth care instead. And even though the sentence is now reduced somewhat by the Supreme Court, he is sentenced to eight years and ten months in prison.
Uncertainties
The guiding judgment comes as a result of the uncertainties surrounding how sentences should be determined for young people who have committed crimes equivalent to life imprisonment for adults.
The practice has previously been that life sentences for young people correspond to 18 years in prison, and that deductions should be made based on the person's age. But in recent years, several courts have handed out clearly higher sentences than that for young people.
The Supreme Court now clarifies that the starting point should still be that life sentences correspond to 18 years, and that youth discounts should be given based on that. But the Supreme Court also says that additions can be made if it involves very serious criminality.
However, it is said that this addition should not exceed two years, says Linnéa Wegerstad, associate professor of criminal law at Lund University.
With the judgment, the Supreme Court thus gives partial green light to the stricter sentences that have been handed out in recent years for young people, but says that the courts have used the wrong method to arrive at the penalties.
Ten years for 15-year-olds
The Supreme Court also establishes that 15-year-olds should not be sentenced to more than ten years in prison, and that the maximum sentence of 14 years in prison for minors can primarily be applicable to persons who are close to 18.
Then they say that the very top parts of the interval should be reserved for cases of extremely serious and repeated criminality. So it's really reinforcement language they're using, says Wegerstad.
According to Linnéa Wegerstad, it is difficult to say with certainty what the judgment will mean for the penalties for young people who commit very serious crimes. However, the judgment clarifies how the courts should arrive at the "right" sentence for these individuals.
The Supreme Court provides more structure for how the assessments should be made. This can make the assessments more similar, so that the same type of crime does not give very different sentences, she says.
