Conley v. State
Annotate this CaseThis case involved a seventeen-and-a-half-year-old who murdered his ten-year-old brother. Defendant confessed to the crime and pleaded guilty to murdering his brother, Conner, while he was babysitting. The trial court judge sentenced Defendant to life without parole. The Supreme Court affirmed the conviction and sentence, holding (1) the trial court did not err in allowing the testimony of a medical doctor who suggested that Defendant had traits of a person with psychopathy; (2) the trial court properly weighed the aggravating and mitigating factors in this case; (3) based on the age of Conner, and the particularly heinous nature of the crime, a sentence of life without parole was appropriate under Indiana Appellate Rule 7(B); and (4) under the facts of this case, the imposition of a life-without-parole sentence on a person under the age of eighteen who has been convicted of murder did not violate either the United States or Indiana Constitution.
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