The Nebraska Legislature overstepped its mandate in a 2002 special session when it changed the minimum sentence for first-degree murder, the Nebraska Supreme Court said Friday.

Legislators changed the minimum sentence for the crime from life in prison to life in prison without parole.

Then-Gov. Mike Johanns had called the special session in response to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in an Arizona case that said juries, and not judges, should decide whether defendants convicted of first-degree murder receive life or death sentences.

Legislators subsequently changed state law so that juries determine whether homicides include aggravating circumstances warranting a death penalty.

On Friday, the state Supreme Court said the lawmakers overstepped their authority when they also changed the minimum sentence.

The Nebraska constitution allows governors to proclaim special sessions, but it restricts lawmakers to the business “for which they were called together.”

Judge Kenneth C. Stephan, writing for the court Friday, said the sentencing change “had no natural connection” to Johanns’ reason for calling the special session.

“There is no language in the proclamation which can reasonably be construed as authorizing the Legislature to amend a statute pertaining to life imprisonment,” Stephan wrote.

The Supreme Court issued the ruling in an appeal from Louis Conover Jr., 45, of Hastings. An Adams County District judge sentenced Conover in 2004 to two consecutive sentences of life without parole for the beating deaths of his parents.

Conover’s attorney, Robert Kortus of the Nebraska Commission on Public Advocacy, argued on appeal that legislators went too far when they changed the minimum sentence.

Kortus contended Friday in an interview that the state constitution allows parole eligibility in all cases except treason and impeachment.

The Nebraska Attorney General’s office had argued the sentencing amendment changed the language, but not the substance, of the law because people serving life sentences in the state are not parole eligible.

Stephan wrote that, even assuming lawmakers were only attempting to clarify what they believed was current law, they lacked the mandate to do so in the special session.

The ruling Friday directed the trial judge to resentence Conover to two life sentences.

Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning said Friday the ruling would have no effect on the sentence Conover will actually serve.

“In this case, and in many others, it was a life sentence without parole before (the ruling) and a life sentence without parole after,” Bruning said.

Bruning did not know how many other convicted first-degree murderers’ sentences might be affected by the ruling, but he said the number was not large.

Reach Butch Mabin at 473-7234 or at bmabin@journalstar.com.