UPDATE 1-U.S. Supreme Court agrees to take up 'D.C. Sniper' sentencing appeal

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday agreed to consider whether a man serving life in prison over his role in a deadly 2002 shooting spree in the Washington area should be resentenced because he was only 17 years old at the time. The nine justices will hear an appeal filed by the state of Virginia objecting to a lower court's decision to order that Lee Boyd Malvo's sentence of life in prison without parole in the so-called D.C. Sniper crimes be thrown out. If Malvo wins, he and other prison inmates in similar cases could receive more lenient sentences.

Malvo and an older accomplice, John Allen Muhammad, shot dead 10 people over three weeks in Washington, Maryland and Virginia. Muhammad was also convicted and was executed in 2009 at age 48 in a Virginia state prison. Virginia appealed in the Malvo case after the Richmond-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in June that he should be resentenced. The appeals court cited Supreme Court decisions issued since the shooting spree finding that mandatory life sentences without parole for juveniles were unconstitutional, and that this rule applied retroactively.

Malvo, 34, had received four life sentences in Virginia, where he was convicted of two murders and later entered a separate guilty plea to avoid the death penalty. He also received life without parole in Maryland. The appeals court called these crimes "the most heinous, random acts of premeditated violence conceivable."

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham)