Jesus Macedo-Perez was seventeen when he exchanged gang signs with another teenager in Indiana that would end in murder. According to court documents Jesus Macedo-Perez was a passenger in a vehicle in Elkhart Indiana when they spotted a rival gang member, Jesus and the other teen exchanged gang sings and Macedo-Perez would pull out a gun, fire at the other teen and killed him. This teen killer would be quickly arrested and would take a plea to escape a life sentence and was sentenced to sixty five years in prison. Jesus Macedo-Perez was featured in the documentary Kids Behind Bars
Jesus Macedo-Perez 2023 Information
DOC Number
243898
First Name
JESUS
Middle Name
Last Name
MACEDO-PEREZ
Suffix
Date of Birth
11/14/1996
Gender
Male
Race
Hispanic
Facility/Location
Wabash Valley Level 3 Facility
Earliest Possible Release Date * *Offenders scheduled for release on a Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday are released on Monday. Offenders scheduled for release on a Thursday, Friday, Saturday or Sunday are released on Thursday. Offenders whose release date falls on a Holiday are released on the first working day prior to the Holiday.
Jesus Macedo-Perez More News
Kenneth Barhams wore his son’s student ID card from a cord around his neck Thursday morning. He talked about the son he will never see graduate.
Barhams spoke on the witness stand in Elkhart Circuit Court. His words were heard by Jesus Macedo-Perez, the 17-year-old Elkhart resident who’d admitted to killing 16-year-old Braxton Barhams.
“Braxton was my baby,” the elder Barhams said. “…You took him from me.”
In keeping with his plea deal, Macedo-Perez was sentenced Thursday to 65 years in the Department of Correction. Circuit Court Judge Terry Shewmaker gave Macedo-Perez credit for 172 days he’d been incarcerated.
Braxton Barhams, a Concord High School student, was slain in a June 22 drive-by shooting in the area of Benham and Garfield avenues in Elkhart. Macedo-Perez, 16 years old at the time of the murder, was later charged. In exchange for Macedo-Perez’s guilty plea, prosecutors agreed to not pursue a criminal gang sentence enhancement against the teen.
A probable cause affidavit unsealed Thursday yielded details about the slaying.
According to the court document, two juvenile witnesses interviewed by police said they were walking with Barhams at the time of the shooting. A gray Impala went past the group south on Benham, with Macedo-Perez — whom one of the witnesses described as a good friend — as a passenger.
A witness told police that Macedo-Perez flashed gang signs at Barhams, and Barhams did the same in response.
The affidavit reads that the witness “stated the driver of the Impala executed a U-turn at the intersection of West Garfield Avenue and Benham Avenue and proceeded north on Benham Avenue. (The witness) observed Jesus Macedo with a large gray gun in his hand, which Jesus Macedo fired the gun (four to five) times out of the Impala in the direction of both witnesses and Barhams.”
The Impala sped away. According to one witness, Barhams said, “I got shot, I got shot,” then fell to the ground.
Medics were called to the scene and transported Barhams to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 7:39 p.m. Macedo-Perez was arrested June 23 at his home.
In court Thursday, Chief Deputy Prosecutor Vicki Becker said Macedo-Perez joined and was associated with the Latin Kings gang. Macedo-Perez’s gang involvement began when he was 14 years old.
A family grieves
On the witness stand Thursday, Kenneth Barhams said he never thought he’d bury his child. The slain youth’s mother, Jeanette Dancler, also talked about the impact of the murder.
“It’s broken my heart to the point where I didn’t want to live,” Dancler said. “…I never got to say goodbye to my son.”
Dancler said she doesn’t hate Macedo-Perez, adding, “I actually feel sorry for him.” She also voiced a question about her son’s murder.
“I would like to know why,” she said. “Why was he chosen to be killed?”
Barhams’ cousin, Victoria Honorable, also told Macedo-Perez her family doesn’t hate him.
“We forgive you, because if we hold vengeance against you, that’s our soul,” she said. Someone called out “Amen!” from the audience section.
Given the opportunity to speak, Macedo-Perez apologized to Barhams’ family, and started to address his own.
“To my family, I’d like to say…” Macedo-Perez began before he broke down. His attorney, Kevin Milner, finished reading the teen’s prepared statement. In part, it was directed to his mother.
“I should have been a better son,” Milner read on his client’s behalf. “You didn’t fail me.”
Near the end of the sentencing, in response to a question from Judge Shewmaker, Jesus Macedo-Perez said he made a big mistake and he can’t take it back.
“Violence is not the answer, is it?,” Shewmaker asked.
Paul Gingerich was twelve and Colt Lundy was fifteen when they murdered Colt’s stepfather as he sat sleeping in his chair. The preteens would then steal the family car and would be arrested at a Walmart in Illinois the next day. Both of the teen killers would stand trial and be sentenced as adults and received thirty years each in prison. Both have since been released from prison after their initial sentences were reduced
Paul Gingerich and Colt Lundy Other News
Paul Henry Gingerich was just 12 when he helped a friend Colt Lundy murder his stepfather.
He also became famous. His story was featured on news shows and crime documentaries, and his case becoming a cause célèbre and a measuring stick on the fairness of the American juvenile justice system.
Here’s what we know about Gingerich and Lundy today, nearly a decade after their crime.
It was shocking when Gingerich and his 15-year-old friend, Colt Lundy, were arrested for the 2010 murder of Phil Danner, a husband, father, machinist and member of the American Legion.
Gingerich, who stands 6 feet tall now, was pint-sized with the face of an urchin and bangs reaching to the top of his eyes. Although he was three years older, Lundy wasn’t much taller than his accomplice and looked very innocent, too, with a face full of freckles.
But Gingerich and Lundy were accused of firing two shots each into Danner’s body.
After the killing, Gingerich, Lundy and a third boy quickly gathered up a few things, including Danner’s wallet, a handgun and some marijuana a friend gave them, and jumped into Danner’s car.
They then headed west on a cross-country trip that ended when they were stopped by a police officer in Peru, Ill.
Gingerich was believed to be the youngest person in Indiana ever sentenced as an adult.
Few could understand what could cause two people so young to commit such a heinous crime.
Lundy said later that he got along well enough with his stepfather — when Danner was sober.
But when Danner drank whiskey and lapsed into one of his tirades, Lundy said, Danner would then become verbally and physically abusive toward him.
Eventually, all Lundy could think about was escaping. One day he took matters into his own hands, after conceiving a plot to kill his stepfather.
On the night of April 20, 2010, Lundy and Gingerich climbed through a window of Lundy’s bedroom in his family’s home in the Enchanted Hills neighborhood of Cromwell, Indiana, in Kosciusko County. They then grabbed two of the many guns Danner had stashed around the house and waited for him in the living room.
At first, they debated about whether they should go through with it. But as Danner, who was in another part of the house, got up and walked into the living room, he suddenly saw the two boys with guns pointed at him.
All he had time to say was “What the f—?” — according to Lundy’s description in a court record — before each boy fired two bullets into his body, killing Danner instantly.
On April 29, 2010, Kosciusko County Superior Court Judge Duane Huffer moved Gingerich’s case into (adult) criminal court, at the request of prosecutors. The next day Gingerich was charged with murder.
About six months later, both boys pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of conspiracy to commit murder and both were sentenced to serve 25 years in prison.
While the murder of Danner was shocking for its brutality and callousness, some in the U.S. and abroad thought the sentences were too severe — especially given the ages of the defendants.
In an amicus curae brief filed in November 2011, the Children’s Law Center, the National Juvenile Defender Center and the Campaign for Youth Justice argued against the “dire consequences” of prosecuting youths in the adult justice system.
Gingerich was sent to the Pendleton Juvenile Correctional Facility to serve his sentence, while Lundy was sent to the Wabash Valley Correctional Facility.
Even with credits for good behavior, that sentence could have kept Gingerich locked up until his mid-20s, with some of that time likely spent in an adult prison.
But both cases had only just begun to wind their way through the Indiana court system.
Soon after he entered prison, Indianapolis attorney Monica Foster began an appeal for Gingerich on a pro-bono basis, meaning she would work on the case for free.
In December 2012, the Indiana Court of Appeals ordered a new trial for Gingerich. The appeals court reversed his 2010 conviction, after determining that a Kosciusko County court had erred by not giving his attorneys enough time to make the case that he should have been tried as a juvenile.
The Indiana attorney general’s reaction at the time was guarded, saying it would continue to work with the Kosciusko County prosecutor’s office “in this difficult matter involving the violent taking of a human life by a juvenile.”
“This offender’s age at the time of the crime prompted a necessary discussion about the rights of the accused, but no one should lose sight of the fact that there is still a deceased victim and the rights of crime victims also should be respected and protected,” the attorney general said in a statement to the IndyStar.
Foster said at the time that Gingerich’s nearly three years of good conduct showed he could be rehabilitated. Foster also planned to introduce expert testimony on brain development to show that children as young as 12 were unable to judge the consequences of their actions.
Gingerich’s case inspired child advocates and juvenile justice activists to lobby for change in Indiana’s juvenile sentencing guidelines. Their efforts resulted in a new law, dubbed “Paul’s Law,” passed in 2013, that gave Indiana courts greater flexibility in deciding juvenile sentences.
In a deal struck with the prosecutor in December 2013, Gingerich again pleaded guilty, this time at the age of 15. The difference: Judge James Heuer applied the new sentencing rules, agreeing to monitor Gingerich’s progress toward rehabilitation in juvenile prison until his release several years later.
A qualified yes.
Gingerich was released from the Pendleton prison in March 2017, after nearly seven years behind bars.
He was 19 at the time of his release and is 21 now.
After his release, Gingerich began living with his mother, Nicole, in Fort Wayne, but he had to undergo 24-hour electronic monitoring with an ankle bracelet until July 2018, as well as close supervision by the court. He also took a job in a manufacturing facility.
“He’s really working hard on doing everything he is supposed to do and really trying to move forward,” his mother told the IndyStar.
The court’s supervision of Gingerich will continue until February 2020, at which time he will begin 10 years of probation.
A northern Indiana judge agreed to allow Lundy to enter home detention earlier than expected.
In October 2018, Kosciusko County Judge David Cates heard the 23-year-old Lundy’s request for a sentence modification.
Lundy had requested to serve the rest of his term on home detention, saying he had served his prison time, so far, without incident and had taken advantage of programs offered to him, including “obtaining a higher education degree.”
It was the second time Lundy had done so; an earlier request for a sentence reduction in 2016 had been rejected.
But this time was different. Lundy will be allowed to finish his sentence out of prison starting March 15 of 2019, according to the Associated Press. He will then be put on probation.
Kosciusko County Prosecutor Daniel Hampton said after Gingerich was re-sentenced in 2013 that the new law “applies very well in this case” and allows for flexibility that a prior judge didn’t have when Gingerich was first sentenced.
Foster has long said that Gingerich was a good prospect for rehabilitation.
“I’ve known him for the last 2½ years and I am willing to bet the mortgage on Paul Gingerich,” Foster said in 2013. “He is a good kid who did a very bad thing.”
Paul Gingerich And Colt Lundy Videos
Paul Gingerich And Colt Lundy More News
Paul Gingerich was just 12 when he helped a friend Colt Lundy murder his stepfather.
He also became famous. His story was featured on news shows and crime documentaries, and his case becoming a cause célèbre and a measuring stick on the fairness of the American juvenile justice system.
Here’s what we know about Gingerich and Lundy today, nearly a decade after their crime.
It was shocking when Paul Gingerich and his 15-year-old friend, Colt Lundy, were arrested for the 2010 murder of Phil Danner, a husband, father, machinist and member of the American Legion.
Gingerich, who stands 6 feet tall now, was pint-sized with the face of an urchin and bangs reaching to the top of his eyes. Although he was three years older, Lundy wasn’t much taller than his accomplice and looked very innocent, too, with a face full of freckles
But Gingerich and Lundy were accused of firing two shots each into Danner’s body.
After the killing, Gingerich, Lundy and a third boy quickly gathered up a few things, including Danner’s wallet, a handgun and some marijuana a friend gave them, and jumped into Danner’s car.
They then headed west on a cross-country trip that ended when they were stopped by a police officer in Peru, Ill.
Paul Gingerich was believed to be the youngest person in Indiana ever sentenced as an adult.
Few could understand what could cause two people so young to commit such a heinous crime.
Lundy said later that he got along well enough with his stepfather — when Danner was sober.
But when Danner drank whiskey and lapsed into one of his tirades, Lundy said, Danner would then become verbally and physically abusive toward him.
On the night of April 20, 2010, Lundy and Paul Gingerich climbed through a window of Lundy’s bedroom in his family’s home in the Enchanted Hills neighborhood of Cromwell, Indiana, in Kosciusko County. They then grabbed two of the many guns Danner had stashed around the house and waited for him in the living room.
At first, they debated about whether they should go through with it. But as Danner, who was in another part of the house, got up and walked into the living room, he suddenly saw the two boys with guns pointed at him.
All he had time to say was “What the f—?” — according to Lundy’s description in a court record — before each boy fired two bullets into his body, killing Danner instantly.
On April 29, 2010, Kosciusko County Superior Court Judge Duane Huffer moved Gingerich’s case into (adult) criminal court, at the request of prosecutors. The next day Paul Gingerich was charged with murder.
About six months later, both boys pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of conspiracy to commit murder and both were sentenced to serve 25 years in prison.
While the murder of Danner was shocking for its brutality and callousness, some in the U.S. and abroad thought the sentences were too severe — especially given the ages of the defendants.
In an amicus curae brief filed in November 2011, the Children’s Law Center, the National Juvenile Defender Center and the Campaign for Youth Justice argued against the “dire consequences” of prosecuting youths in the adult justice system.
Paul Gingerich was sent to the Pendleton Juvenile Correctional Facility to serve his sentence, while Lundy was sent to the Wabash Valley Correctional Facility.
Even with credits for good behavior, that sentence could have kept Gingerich locked up until his mid-20s, with some of that time likely spent in an adult prison.
But both cases had only just begun to wind their way through the Indiana court system.
Soon after he entered prison, Indianapolis attorney Monica Foster began an appeal for Paul Gingerich on a pro-bono basis, meaning she would work on the case for free.
In December 2012, the Indiana Court of Appeals ordered a new trial for Paul Gingerich. The appeals court reversed his 2010 conviction, after determining that a Kosciusko County court had erred by not giving his attorneys enough time to make the case that he should have been tried as a juvenile.
The Indiana attorney general’s reaction at the time was guarded, saying it would continue to work with the Kosciusko County prosecutor’s office “in this difficult matter involving the violent taking of a human life by a juvenile.”
“This offender’s age at the time of the crime prompted a necessary discussion about the rights of the accused, but no one should lose sight of the fact that there is still a deceased victim and the rights of crime victims also should be respected and protected,” the attorney general said in a statement to the IndyStar.
Foster said at the time that Gingerich’s nearly three years of good conduct showed he could be rehabilitated. Foster also planned to introduce expert testimony on brain development to show that children as young as 12 were unable to judge the consequences of their actions.
Gingerich’s case inspired child advocates and juvenile justice activists to lobby for change in Indiana’s juvenile sentencing guidelines. Their efforts resulted in a new law, dubbed “Paul’s Law,” passed in 2013, that gave Indiana courts greater flexibility in deciding juvenile sentences.
In a deal struck with the prosecutor in December 2013, Gingerich again pleaded guilty, this time at the age of 15. The difference: Judge James Heuer applied the new sentencing rules, agreeing to monitor Gingerich’s progress toward rehabilitation in juvenile prison until his release several years later
He was 19 at the time of his release and is 21 now.
After his release, Gingerich began living with his mother, Nicole, in Fort Wayne, but he had to undergo 24-hour electronic monitoring with an ankle bracelet until July 2018, as well as close supervision by the court. He also took a job in a manufacturing facility.
“He’s really working hard on doing everything he is supposed to do and really trying to move forward,” his mother told the IndyStar.
The court’s supervision of Paul Gingerich will continue until February 2020, at which time he will begin 10 years of probation.
A northern Indiana judge agreed to allow Lundy to enter home detention earlier than expected.
In October 2018, Kosciusko County Judge David Cates heard the 23-year-old Lundy’s request for a sentence modification.
Lundy had requested to serve the rest of his term on home detention, saying he had served his prison time, so far, without incident and had taken advantage of programs offered to him, including “obtaining a higher education degree.”
It was the second time Lundy had done so; an earlier request for a sentence reduction in 2016 had been rejected.
But this time was different. Lundy will be allowed to finish his sentence out of prison starting March 15 of 2019, according to the Associated Press. He will then be put on probation.
Kosciusko County Prosecutor Daniel Hampton said after Paul Gingerich was re-sentenced in 2013 that the new law “applies very well in this case” and allows for flexibility that a prior judge didn’t have when Gingerich was first sentenced.
Foster has long said that Paul Gingerich was a good prospect for rehabilitation.
“I’ve known him for the last 2½ years and I am willing to bet the mortgage on Paul Gingerich,” Foster said in 2013. “He is a good kid who did a very bad thing.”
Paula Cooper was fifteen years old when she was sentenced to death for the brutal murder of an elderly woman. According to court documents Paula Cooper and three other girls had skipped school and were drinking and smoking marijuana when they went to the home of the elderly woman, Ruth Pelke and gaining entry into the home by asking for bible lessons.
Once inside of the home Paula Cooper and the three other girls would attack the elderly woman and Cooper would stab her over thirty times. The girls would steal ten dollars from the woman and stealing her vehicle. Paula Cooper would be arrested soon after.
At trial this teen killer plead guilty to murder and felony murder and would be sentenced to death. Due to her age at the time there was much outrage in the community and soon her death sentence would be commuted to life in prison. After serving over twenty six years in prison Paula Cooper would be paroled. Less than two years after her release she would take her own life.
Paula Cooper Other News
Bill Pelke remembers rage and anger pulsating through Northwest Indiana 34 years ago when his gentle grandmother was found butchered in her Gary home.
Pelke felt that same fury toward Paula Cooper, the troubled, abused 15-year-old Gary teen who plunged a knife into Ruth Pelke 33 times after she opened the door of her Glen Park neighborhood home to four teens to give them Bible lessons on May 14, 1985.
Former Lake County Prosecutor Jack Crawford said Ruth Pelke said the “Lord’s Prayer,” during the violent assault.
Cooper pleaded guilty. A year later, Lake Superior Court Judge James Kimbrough gave her the death penalty. She was 16.
The brutal crime still reverberates through Northwest Indiana and is especially raw for those who lived it, like Bill Pelke, now 72, and Cooper’s older sister, Rhonda LaBroi, who joined Pelke briefly during his talk Monday at Indiana University-Northwest.[Most read] Bodies of two friends found in DuSable Harbor after going to River North club over weekend lost control of car, drove into lake: authorities »
A year after Ruth Pelke’s death, Bill Pelke told the audience of his epiphany while praying in a crane cab at Bethlehem Steel in Burns Harbor.
It began with an image of the grandmother he called “Nana.”
Her bludgeoned, crumpled body didn’t come to mind. What emerged was a radiant portrait he held up for the audience to see.
“I think about not how she died, but what she stood for. I knew something had occurred in me. I called it a miracle.”
He said his grandmother would think of Jesus’s words after his crucifixion: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.
Pelke thought about it, too. The next day he wrote a letter to Cooper, housed on death row at the Indiana Women’s Prison in Indianapolis.
Cooper’s crime likely hastened white flight from Gary, offering justification for those who needed it. Pelke recalled hateful letters printed in the Post-Tribune’s Voice of the People.
“This girl couldn’t be killed soon enough,” he said.
Pelke, though, managed to bury his furor. The Vietnam veteran reached out to Cooper’s anguished grandfather in 1986, bringing him a basket of fruit on Thanksgiving.
LaBroi said her grandfather was astonished at Pelke’s visit. “My grandfather said maybe there is a God because this man really is serious. I really believe he has forgiven.”
Pelke continued to work at Bethlehem Steel and correspond with Cooper. By 1987, he began his own death penalty abolition movement called “Journey of Hope.”
After Pelke’s article about love and forgiveness appeared in the Post-Tribune, an Italian journalist contacted him and came to Indiana.
Even without today’s clamor of social media, Cooper’s story resonated across Europe, which doesn’t have capital punishment.
Pope John Paul II penned a letter to Gov. Robert Orr, asking for Cooper to be spared. An appeal to the United Nations came with 1 million signatures.
In 1987, the General Assembly passed Gary state Sen. Earline Rogers’ bill raising the minimum age for the death penalty from 10 to 16. The measure, however, would not affect Cooper.
In 1988, the U.S. Supreme Court banned the death penalty for defendants under age 16. In 1989, the Indiana Supreme Court commuted Cooper’s sentence to 60 years.
Meanwhile, Pelke retired in 1996 and moved to Anchorage, Alaska, where he lives today. He visits often and continues his advocacy in an old Trailways bus with a 24-foot “Journey of Hope,” banner on its side.
He didn’t meet Paula Cooper until 1996.
“I gave her a hug and told her I loved her and I had forgiven her. He visited her several more times until her release at age 43 in 2013, after serving 27 years in prison.
Two weeks after the 30th anniversary of the killing on May 26, 2015, Cooper committed suicide in Indianapolis.
“She was not able to forgive herself,” Pelke said of Cooper’s depression.
Pelke’s own journey has taken him to 20 countries. On this trip home, he said he held his great-grandchild for the first time.
“Revenge is never the answer,” he said of capital punishment. “As long as human beings decide who can live and die, we’re going to make mistakes.”
Paula Cooper Videos
Paula Cooper More News
The campaign to save the life of Paula Cooper, who at 16 became the youngest Death Row inmate in Indiana, attracted international attention after she pleaded guilty to murder in 1986.
Her successful appeal eventually led to her June 2013 release after serving 27 years in prison.
But on Tuesday, Cooper’s story came to a somber end in Indianapolis. Police say she was found dead, apparently by her own hand.
Cooper, 45, died just after 7:15 a.m. from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head in the 9500 block of Angola Court, according to Indianapolis Metropolitan Police. Marion County coroner’s office on Wednesday ruled her death a suicide
A police report said the responding officer “located the victim lying next to a tree on the west lawn area of the ITT parking lot.” A Bryco .380-caliber handgun was in the victim’s lap and a black Toyota Corolla registered to Cooper was parked nearby.
“It’s an unusual ending to a tragic case,” said Indianapolis attorney Jack Crawford, who was the Lake County prosecutor when Cooper was charged. “I’ve been involved in a lot of cases in my life, and nothing compared to this case.”
Cooper became infamous in 1985 when at 15 she was charged with murder in the stabbing of 78-year-old Ruth Pelke during a robbery. Law enforcement identified Cooper as the ringleader in the slaying. She and three friends went to Pelke’s Gary home armed with a 12-inch butcher knife.
An investigation showed Pelke allowed the teens into her home after they said they were interested in Bible study lessons. But the scene turned grisly when they knocked Pelke to the ground and Cooper climbed on top of her.
“Paula Cooper got on top of her and kept saying to her, and this is her own admission, ‘Where’s the money, bitch?'” Crawford told The Indianapolis Star during a 2013 interview. He said Cooper began slicing Pelke with the butcher knife. The woman’s last words were the Lord’s Prayer.
The other teens involved were sentenced to lengthy prison terms on robbery or murder charges: 25, 35 and 60 years. But when Paula Cooper was sentenced, the judge invoked capital punishment.
The decision led to an immediate shift in public outrage. Paula Cooper was among only a handful of women in Indiana to receive the death penalty, and she was the youngest in the state’s history. At the time of her sentencing, she was also the youngest Death Row inmate in the United States.
The 30th anniversary of the murder was just two weeks ago.
Bill Pelke, a grandson of the slain Bible teacher, told The Star on Tuesday that he forgave Paula Cooper, who said she had been abused as a child. He said he visited her in prison 14 times. They exchanged emails almost weekly the last two years of her incarceration.
In one of their last messages, Paula Cooper told Pelke her time in prison was about up and she was scared. She had spent most of her life incarcerated. She had never written a check or paid a bill.
There was so much, Pelke said, that she didn’t know how to do.
He offered to help. But the two talked only once after she was released.
Pelke said he was devastated to hear of Cooper’s death.
“We had wanted to do things together around restorative justice and the death penalty,” he said. She wanted to be an example for other young people who have been abused.
“She wanted to tell them, ‘Look, this is how I responded to the hate and anger, and look at all the trouble I got into,'” he said. “She wanted to give them alternatives so they didn’t end up like her.”
Cooper’s pursuit of an appeal made her world renowned. According to the Indiana Historical Society, the Indiana Supreme Court received 2 million signatures in support of her appeal. Pope John Paul II sent an emissary to Crawford’s office and wrote an appeal to then-Gov. Robert Orr. The United Nations received a million signatures in support of overturning Cooper’s death penalty.
Two years after Cooper’s sentencing, the U.S. Supreme Court, which was already considering the issue of imposing death sentences on teens, ruled it was unconstitutional to execute anyone who was younger than 16 at the time the person committed a crime. Indiana lawmakers later raised the minimum age from 10 to 16 in 1989 and again to 18 in 2002.
“A lot of things have changed,” Crawford said. “It was a truly unique case.”
The Indiana Supreme Court commuted Cooper’s death sentence and sent her to prison for 60 years. She served 27 years of that sentence until her 2013 release.
Kevin Relphorde, who served as Cooper’s public defender, said Tuesday he was stunned by the news. He said he hadn’t spoken to Paula Cooper in years and had lost track of her.
“Paula was a good person,” he said. “She was very misunderstood. She went through a lot at the hands of her father, with physical abuse, and I think that led to the situation with Mrs. Pelke.”
Her time at the Rockville Correctional Facility began with troubles. In 1995, she was sentenced to three years of solitary confinement for assaulting a prison guard.
“I was very bitter and angry, so I was in a lot of trouble. I hated it. But I learned to adapt eventually,” she said in a 2004 interview with The Star.
Paula Cooper soon began pursuing educational opportunities, first earning her GED, then a vocational degree, and in 2001 a bachelor’s degree. Beginning in 2011, she worked as a tutor.
“She couldn’t deal with the outside world,” speculated Warren W. Lewis, a retired dean and professor at Martin University who taught Cooper at the Indiana Women’s Prison.
“I knew her well, and I loved her,” Lewis said Tuesday. “She was practically a child, and she shouldn’t have been treated like an adult.”
Lewis said he taught Paula Cooper and other female inmates a college-level Introduction to Philosophy class. He had not had any contact with her for several years.
“My goal,” he said, “was to work up to a level of trust to ask, ‘Why are you in this prison?'”
When he reached that point with Cooper, Lewis said, the young prisoner told him no one had ever asked her that question.
“I really don’t know why I did that” was the best she could offer in regard to her role in the killing.
Like a lot of prisoners, Paula Cooper had difficulty connecting the cause and effect of crime -– “there’s a disconnect,” Lewis said.
Lewis said he took her death as a personal failure.
“My question,” he said, “is what happened to her once she got out?”
It’s unclear how Cooper was spending her time since she was released. Rhonda Labroi, her sister, declined to comment about Cooper’s death Tuesday.
“It’s just amazing that after all those years of incarceration that she would be released and then something like this would happen,” said Relphorde, who added that Paula Cooper was remorseful about the killing. “She was willing to pay her debt to society.”
Andrew Conley was seventeen years old when he murdered his ten year old brother. According to court documents Andrew would strangle his ten year old brother and when asked why he would do such a thing he would reply “It was like being hungry and seeing a cheeseburger”. This teen killer would be sentenced to life in prison with no parole
Andrew Conley 2023 Information
DOC Number
218096
First Name
ANDREW
Middle Name
Last Name
CONLEY
Suffix
Date of Birth
05/14/1992
Gender
Male
Race
White
Facility/Location
Pendleton Correctional Facility
Earliest Possible Release Date * *Offenders scheduled for release on a Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday are released on Monday. Offenders scheduled for release on a Thursday, Friday, Saturday or Sunday are released on Thursday. Offenders whose release date falls on a Holiday are released on the first working day prior to the Holiday.
Andrew Conley Other News
Convicted sibling murderer Andrew Conley wants a reduction in his life sentence.
His mother, changing from her stance nearly a decade ago, would also like him to walk free at some point.
Andrew Conley was just 17 when he strangled his 10-year-old brother Conner in their Rising Sun home as their parents were at work in 2009. The teen covered the boy’s head in a plastic bag, then moved the body to a wooded area near the city park. The next day, he walked into the local police department and confessed the crime.
In 2010, Conley pleaded guilty on the first day of the murder trial and received a sentence of life without parole for the fratricide. He’s been serving that punishment at the Pendleton Correctional Facility.
Andrew Conley appealed the sentence to the Indiana Supreme Court, which affirmed the life without parole sentence even though he was only 17 at the time of the killing.
Attorneys for Conley are now trying other avenues to give him a chance of seeing freedom at some point in his adult life. One of those ways is a change of heart by Conley’s mother.
In an amended pro se petition for post-conviction relief filed in Ohio County Circuit Court on October 12, public defenders Kathleen Cleary and Deidre Eltzroth argue that Bridget Conley has a right to be heard.
“Bridget Conley, the mother of (Andrew) is also the mother of Conner and is therefore considered the victim in this case… She has a right to be heard at Conley’s evidentiary hearing as to her position on his sentence. She will tell the court that she has changed her position on Conley’s sentence, and she wants him re-sentenced to a term of years,” Cleary and Eltzroth state.
The attorneys also contend that Conley’s rights to effective legal counsel were violated.
Specifically, the attorneys say Andrew was denied right afforded under the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution, as well as several sections of the Indiana Constitution.
The attorneys say Conley should have been advised by his 2010 trial counsel on the first day of the trial that he should plea guilty rather than present an available defense that he was guilty but mentally ill. That advice and Conley’s plea, they argue, was based on a false premise that Conley could not receive a life in prison sentence.
“Conley’s guilty plea was not knowing, intelligent or voluntary violating his rights,” the attorneys wrote in the petition. “Counsel performed deficiently by advising Conley to plead guilty in a proceeding which afforded him no sentencing benefit and effectively waived his right to a jury determination of his penalty.”
The petition also takes issue with Andrew Conley’s trial attorney not sufficiently cross-examining a pathologist and psychologist who testified at the sentencing hearing.
“Materially inaccurate information used to sentence Conley to life without parole includes information that he was a sociopath or psychopath, had sociopathic symptoms, that the victim was alive at the time the plastic bag was applied, and that the victim suffered a sexual assault,” Cleary and Eltzroth conclude.
Arguments will be heard in Ohio County court in December. The hearing could last more than a week as Conley’s appellate attorneys are planning to have multiple witnesses, including Bridget Conley, a psychologist, and a pathologist.
Dearborn-Ohio County Prosecutor Lynn Deddens said the state will fight any change in Andrew Conley’s sentence.
“We intend to vigorously defend the just sentence imposed by circuit court in 2010. His actions were just as heinous in 2010 as they are today,” said Deddens.
The prosecutor said she may also call witnesses to testify in favor of the life sentence.
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Andrew Conley Appeal
A Rising Sun teenager’s sentence of life without parole for killing his 10-year-old brother is under review by the Indiana Supreme Court.
Andrew Conley was 17 when he choked, suffocated and beat his brother Conner to death. In February, 12 years after the murder, a unanimous Court of Appeals ordered a new sentencing hearing. The court said Conley’s defense lawyers failed to present evidence that teenagers’ brains aren’t fully developed, and didn’t even bring up a U-S Supreme Court decision predating the murder which suggested life sentences for juveniles are inherently suspect. The court also faulted Conley’s attorneys for failing to present evidence of Conley’s mental health issues, including a history of abuse and neglect.
n oral arguments, the justices offered few clues to their view of the case. Justice Christopher Goff said the U-S Supreme Court ruling presents a major obstacle to upholding a life sentence. But Chief Justice Loretta Rush said her review of the lower court record appears to show Conley’s lawyers did raise the issues surrounding their client’s age, though not in as much detail as on appeal. She questioned whether there’s grounds to throw out Conley’s sentence on grounds which have been heard and rejected before.
Conley is one of just three Hoosiers serving life without parole for a crime committed as a minor. The others were convicted in the murder of a South Bend police officer, and a Muncie stickup attempt which ended in the murder of a Ball State student. But while the U-S Supreme Court took a dim view of treating minors as “the worst of the worst,” the high court stopped short of declaring life sentences at that age unconstitutional in all circumstances. In May, the justices declined to hear an appeal in the Muncie case which urged them to take that step.
Andrew Conley is currently incarcerated at the Pendleton Correctional Facility
Andrew Conley Release Date
Andrew Conley is serving life without parole
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