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Paris Bennett Teen Killer Murders Little Sister

Paris Bennett was thirteen years old when he murdered his little sister. According to court documents Paris Bennett would convinced his babysitter to go home and when she left he would stab his four year old sister more than a dozen times. Paris Bennett would call 911 and tell the operator what he had just done. Years later he would admit in an interview that the reason behind the brutal murder is that he wanted his mother to suffer. This teen killer would be sentenced to forty years in prison.

Paris Bennett 2023 Information

SID Number: 07898441

TDCJ Number: 01804782

Name: BENNETT, PARIS LEE

Race: W

Gender: M

DOB: 1993-10-10

Maximum Sentence Date: 2047-02-05

Current Facility: FERGUSON

Projected Release Date: 2047-02-05

Parole Eligibility Date: 2027-02-05

Offender Visitation Eligible: YES

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Twelve years ago a Texas mother learned her 4-year-old daughter Ella had been brutally murdered.

The person who murdered Charity Lee’s child wasn’t a serial killer or known criminal.

It was her 13-year-old son, Paris Bennett.

Ella was stabbed 17 times and strangled by her sibling while she slept in her bed. Paris had convinced their babysitter to go home and later phoned 911 to confess to the murder

He confessed he did it to get back at his mother.

ITV presenter Piers Morgan interviewed the now 25-year-old Bennett in a jail in Texas where he is serving 40 years behind bars.

Having spent almost half his life in prison, he will soon be eligible for parole.

With an IQ of 141, Bennett qualifies as a genius. Less than a quarter of one per cent of the world’s population has that level of intelligence.

As Morgan wrote in his story for Daily Mail, Bennett is also a psychopath, “someone who has been formally diagnosed as a psychopath by medical experts”.

Echoing famous scenes from The Silence of the Lambs, Morgan met Bennett in a secure room behind reinforced glass with heavily armed guards standing by. He was told he could not speak to the killer face to face.

“Why not?” Morgan asked.

“He’s too dangerous,” came the reply.

Morgan wrote: “True psychopaths have a chronic mental disorder that manifests itself in a number of personality traits including amoral or antisocial behaviour, extreme egocentricity, a lack of ability to love or establish meaningful relationships, and no sense of guilt, shame or embarrassment.

“Psychopaths can also be quite terrifyingly violent. Paris Bennett ticks every box.”

The facts of the case are chilling.

When he was 13, Bennett says he decided to punish his mother Charity for perceived wrongs. He planned to kill her. But instead decided to kill his 4-year-old sister Ella, effectively doubling the impact – one child dead, the other in prison.

While mother Charity was at work in a local bar, Bennett put his plan into action. He told the baby sitter to leave early, then calmly walked into his sister’s bedroom and began ferociously attacking her.

Bennett then called a friend on the phone and talked for six minutes before calling the police, who came and arrested him.

Lee told Morgan: “If Paris had killed me as he originally intended, I’d have only suffered for a brief few moments.

“But by killing Ella instead, he knew he was sentencing me to a lifetime of suffering.”

Incredibly, Lee says she has forgiven her son and visits him regularly. But she fears that if he is granted parole, he will torment her all over again.

When asked about her son, Lee told Morgan: “He’s human. He’ll be nice, personable, polite. Paris is very charming when he wants to be. I mean, he’s a psychopath.”

As Bennett walked into the secure room he announced, “Hello everyone”.

“Since this is going to be done for ITV, would you like me to speak in the Queen’s English?” he asked Morgan.

“Why are you doing this interview?” Morgan asked Bennett. “To show people that I am not a monster or villain,” he replied.

“Can you rationalise or explain what you did to your sister?” Morgan asked.

“I can’t easily explain everything. I think that’s been one of the biggest challenges for other people through the years, because no one likes to be confused. No one likes to be bewildered. We like… easy answers.”

Morgan asked why he had so much fury.

“For many years, there was just this hot, flaming ball of wrath in the pit of my stomach and it was directed at my mother,” Bennett said.

“And one of the reasons why I chose to kill my sister and not someone else is because I knew that by doing that I could hurt my mother in the worst possible way, because I had always known, as a child, that the most devastating thing to my mother would be the loss of one of her children, and I found a way to take away both her children in one fell swoop.

“Part of me loved my sister and would have turned the world upside down for her.” But there was a part “wounded, twisted, dark… the part that had been in pain for so long”.

“Misery loves company,” he said.

“I love her [Ella] with every fibre of my being.”

When asked by Morgan if he knew what love is, Bennett replied: “I don’t know how to answer that question. It’s not simple. I can’t just point at something and say, ‘OK, that’s love, I recognise it and feel that’.”

Bennett was then asked if he would kill again.

“The only person I’m dangerous to is myself because the very moment I feel the chains slipping and the bars bending, the very moment I detect that dark part of myself coming back out again, I would remove myself from the equation.

“Every single person walking around has it in him or her to commit murder. Margaret Atwood once wrote that if we were all on trial for our thoughts, we would all be hanged.

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An Abilene teen who admitted to murdering his 4-year-old sister will serve the remainder of his 40-year sentence in an adult prison.

A hearing was held at the Taylor County Courthouse this week to make the determination.

In August 2007, Paris Lee Bennett, who was 13 at the time, admitted to stabbing his sister, Ella Lee Bennett, in February of that year. Bennett is now 18 years old.

He was sentenced to 40 years in state custody and has been held in a Texas Juvenile Justice Department facility in Giddings, Texas. Bennett will turn 19 in October and the juvenile facility cannot hold offenders past that age.

Bennett began his transfer hearing Tuesday to determine whether he would be moved from the juvenile facility to a prison under the Texas Department of Corrections.

Judge Robert Harper ordered a closed hearing due to psychological testimony given about Bennett. Wednesday afternoon, Harper ruled Bennett will serve out the rest of his sentence in prison.

Bennett will be eligible for parole after serving half of his time. Since he has been in state custody since February 2007, Bennett has built up credit for the time served in the juvenile system.

Assistant District Attorney Harriett Haag said she is pleased with the ruling.

“I’m glad it’s over. It was a tragedy. It was a terrible loss of a beautiful little girl and a destruction of a family,” she said. “It’s a true tragedy and I’m glad my part of it is over with,” Haag said.

https://ktxs.com/news/abilene/abilene-teen-to-serve-remainder-of-40-year-sentence-for-killing-4-year-old-sister-in-adult-prison

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Paris Bennett is currently incarcerated at the Ferguson Prison in Texas

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Paris Bennett is eligible for parole in 2027. His maximum release date is 2047

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Paris Bennett stabbed his younger sibling Ella 17 times, after convincing their babysitter to go home for the evening.

The then-teenager, who is a genius with an IQ of 141, told police that he had done it in revenge for his mother relapsing into drugs.

Charity Lee, 44, had previously been a heroin addict before both Paris and Ella were born.

She relapsed when Paris was 11, taking cocaine for a six-month period and causing him to step in and look after his sister.

Charity had been at her waitress job in Abilene, Texas, on February 5 2007, when she police arrived to tell her that Ella had been murdered.

Paris had planned out the killing, attacking his little sister in her bedroom while she slept.

He then called a friend, before dialling 911 and telling an emergency worker what he had done.

The operator had responded by saying: ‘You think you killed somebody?’, to which Paris then replied, while crying: ‘No I know I did. My sister. I feel so messed up.’

At first he lied that he had suffered a hallucination, but later claimed he was in his right mind, stating it was revenge for his mother’s relapse.

He said: ‘For many years, there was just this hot, flaming ball of wrath in the pit of my stomach and it was directed at my mother.

‘One of the reasons why I chose to kill my sister and not someone else is because I knew that by doing that I could hurt my mother in the worst possible way, because I had always known, as a child, that the most devastating thing to my mother would be the loss of one of her children, and I found a way to take away both her children in one fell swoop.

He still maintains that he is not insane and does not suffer from any mental illness.

Charity said she managed to forgive her son after recognising him as a ‘predator’, likening him to a shark, unable to be anything other than be ‘what they are’.

She wrote in Good Housekeeping she has ‘learned to live with the past’ but will never understand why her Paris ‘did what he did’.

In a 2017 documentary, she said she would be frightened if he was free – particularly as she now has another son, Phoenix, born in 2013.

Paris has never met him, as he is not allowed to have any contact with children due his conviction.

Charity said: ‘If Paris wasn’t in prison or was able to meet Phoenix, I would have to do a lot more soul-searching.’

She now runs the Ella Foundation, set up in 2007 to aid those affected by ‘violence, mental illness, and the criminal justice system’, and does public speaking across the US.

Good Morning Britain host Piers described Paris as ‘more intelligent, more cunning and more manipulative’ than any of the killers he has met before.

Psychopath murdered his sister, 4, ‘in revenge for mum’s drug relapse’

Joshua Phillips Teen Killer Murders 8 Year Old Girl

Joshua Phillips was fourteen years old when he murdered an eight year old girl. According to court documents Joshua Phillips and the little girl were in his bedroom when he would struck the girl with a baseball bat and strangled her. This teen killer would hide the body of the child underneath his waterbed and a number of days later his mother would notice a leak and come upon the child’s body. Joshua Phillips would be sentenced to life in prison without parole

Joshua Phillips 2023 Information

DC Number:	J11775
Name:	PHILLIPS, JOSHUA E
Race:	WHITE
Sex:	MALE
Birth Date:	03/17/1984
Initial Receipt Date:	08/26/1999
Current Facility:	CROSS CITY C.I.
Current Custody:	CLOSE
Current Release Date:	SENTENCED TO LIFE

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She’d pull four plates, four forks and four knives from the cupboard and then it would hit her: There were only three in the family now.

Jessie Clifton was 11 when 20 years ago Saturday her 8-year-old sister, Maddie, whom she considered to be her very best friend, seemingly vanished from the suburban Jacksonville neighborhood they grew up in. From that moment on, no one’s life in the Clifton family would be the same.

Three years later when Jessie was 14, she finally mastered pulling plates and silverware in groups of three. But then her mother, Sheila Clifton, haunted by the home across the street, moved out. Then it was just the two of them: Steve Clifton and his daughter Jessie.

The years that immediately followed 1998 are largely gone from Jessie Clifton’s memory. Not gone are the chilling details — faces, expressions, sounds, actions, feelings of what was unfolding within the family, within the Lakewood neighborhood starting on that Nov. 3 evening when Maddie didn’t join the family at the dinner table.

“It almost starts to feel like a really bad dream until I go home and the little things remind me,” Jessie Clifton said last week. “It’s like you start to forget what your life was like because it was so long ago.”

Maddie’s story, the story of a missing girl, brought Jacksonville to its knees.

It was Election Day and Sheila Clifton came home from voting when her youngest daughter vaulted from the house promising to be home in time for supper. Maddie was seen hitting golf balls down the street then she headed home to round up some more balls.

That was the last time she was seen.

Hundreds of volunteers rooted through Jacksonville, passing out thousands of flyers with the hopes of finding a girl named Maddie Clifton.

Maddie resonated with people. She could have been anyone’s child. A little girl with a freckle-dotted face. A little girl who played piano and pick-up basketball like nobody’s business. She had a zest for life and a heart for the underdog.

When watching a TV show, she’d root for scary people or scary things because she didn’t like the idea of people or things feeling lonely or being isolated, her sister said.

Maybe that’s why Maddie went across the street where an awkward and somewhat isolated boy lived.

The first seven days of Maddie’s disappearance was like a three-ring circus. The activity in the community was nonstop: Cops, reporters and hundreds of people descended on the lives of the Cliftons, all in the name of finding Maddie. Even National Guard troops were called to walk through the sewer system looking for signs of the missing girl.

On Nov. 10, Maddie’s parents had just finished taping an interview with a national news morning program when neighbor Missy Phillips ran across the street to find a police officer. Phillips found Maddie’s body entombed inside the frame of her 14-year-old son’s waterbed. Maddie’s body was partially clothed; she had been beaten with a baseball bat and stabbed multiple times.

As police went to a middle school and arrested Joshua Phillips that day, parents at Maddie’s San Jose Catholic School raced there to take their children home early. Children were seen sobbing as they clung to their parents and headed for home.

Joshua Phillips told police Maddie came over to play baseball and that he accidentally hit her in the head with a ball. He said when she wouldn’t stop crying, he dragged her in the house. He said he was afraid of what his father, an alcoholic with a violent temper, would do if he found out he had been playing with someone, something he said he wasn’t allowed to do when his parents weren’t home.

Joshua Phillips slept on that waterbed for the next seven nights as Maddie’s body began to waste away. He later told the Times-Union that he told himself nothing happened to her so much that he began to believe it. So he joined hundreds of others and searched for Maddie during those seven days two decades ago.

Churches across Jacksonville opened their doors for a community — who largely never met Maddie — to come together and grieve in 1998. At one service, Jessie Clifton addressed the congregation and asked God to forgive her for pleading with him to bring her sister back.

The following day, some 1,400 people poured into the same Catholic church on San Jose Boulevard where Maddie made her First Communion, but this time it was for the little girl’s funeral. Maddie’s small casket was placed at the center of the altar, covered in a cream-colored cloth. Nearby was a photo of the little girl with the Kool-Aid smile. A heart-shaped flower arrangement from Maddie’s third-grade class also stood nearby. Outside, thousands lined the streets.

On Nov. 19, 1998, a grand jury returned a first-degree murder charge against Joshua Phillips.

“The citizens of Jacksonville should be assured every appropriate resource in my office will be devoted to making sure Maddie Clifton’s murderer is brought to justice,” State Attorney Harry Shorstein said at a news conference. “The murder of this little girl has shaken me just as it has the rest of our community.”

Joshua Phillips was going to be tried as an adult and the Maddie Clifton story again became national news.

A conviction of first-degree murder at the time was an automatic life sentence for a boy, too young to be executed by the state.

A tall, curly-haired boy entered the courtroom the following year. Prior to the murder charge, he had never been in trouble. He was a boy who liked computers and his dog, a beagle.

“This was a devastating murder that will forever be in the memories of anyone in Jacksonville at the time,” said retired veteran prosecutor Bernie de la Rionda. “Historically it was one of the most horrific murders, there is no doubt about that. … Everyone was talking about it. When you’ve got a missing girl, and this missing girl turns out to be dead, I don’t think there was anyone who didn’t know about this or who wasn’t praying for her or attempting to find her.”

Because of all that and all the pre-trial publicity, the trial was moved out of Jacksonville.

During the trial, the boy’s attorney called no witnesses. Joshua Phillips was found guilty of first-degree murder and was sent away to spend the rest of his life behind bars. He would later get the same punishment at a new sentencing last year when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional to automatically sentence youthful offenders to life.

Maddie’s story didn’t end in 1999 when Joshua Phillips was shipped off to prison. The lives of those associated with him and with Maddie continued to veer off course.

The day Maddie was found under Joshua Phillips’s waterbed was the day Jessie Clifton began to lose her identity. She was a nerdy kid growing up and didn’t hang around with the popular kids.

“I was never the cool kid in school and was made fun of,” she said. “I was the geek.”

But suddenly with the death of her sister, everyone, it seemed wanted to know her. It bothered her, she said, because in her mind, these school kids never cared for her before.

Something else weighed on her too. She felt as if she was not Jessie Clifton, rather she was now Maddie Clifton’s sister. “That’s who I became. I wasn’t Jessie,” she said.

A similar thing happened to Missy Phillips, Joshua Phillips’s mother. Phillips said she tried to withdraw from society as best she could. She split her time between Jacksonville and North Central Florida hoping maybe she could reinvent herself.

For some reason, she thought if she rode her bicycle places, people wouldn’t put the face with the bike rider and therefore she’d go unnoticed.

Eventually, she did get noticed. In a church where she’d hoped to seek solace.

“Are you Joshua Phillips’s mother?” asked a stranger who approached her.

Phillips said she thought about lying but then remembered she was in a church.

“Yes,” she told the woman. Bracing for the worse, the unexpected happened when the woman reached out and embraced Phillips.

Things like that, Phillips said last month, happened more than once. That makes her feel better.

Also making her feel better is Jessie Clifton’s warmth back then and more recently.

On Wednesday, Jessie Clifton recalled how Phillips stayed inside after her son was arrested. “She hated to come outside,” she said.

So Jessie Clifton helped out. She’d walk the dog and when she’d see Phillips pull in the driveway from the grocery store, she said she’d race out to help her carry the grocery sacks inside.

Phillips sent the family a Christmas card each year.

“She was such a sweet and kind person, she didn’t deserve what happened,” Jessie Clifton said. ”… I feel like she feels everyone was against her. She found Maddie and I cannot even imagine that and then to realize what her son had done. That is a lot for one person to handle.”

The two of them shared a bond that day in November 1998 when Clifton lost her sister and Phillips lost a son: “A loss is a loss,” Jessie Clifton said.

Lives continued to unravel.

Missy Phillips’ husband, Steve Phillips, died in a car crash.

Steve and Sheila Clifton divorced after 25 years of marriage. The couple had known each other in high school and had been together for 30 years.

But Maddie’s death put an end to the normalcy that the family enjoyed — a solid family that enjoyed one another, enjoyed fishing trips and vacations.

“Everything stopped when my parents divorced,” Jessie Clifton said.

They handled the grief differently, with Steve Clifton largely shutting down and Sheila Clifton wanting to talk about it, Jessie Clifton said. But she didn’t think it was a good time to talk with her mother for this story.

Sheila Clifton moved into her mother’s house in the same neighborhood allowing her to still be close to her daughter, but away from the Phillips’ home where Maddie died. She then moved to Macclenny where she is today.

Steve Clifton moved out of the house this summer. Jessie still lives there and is in the process of buying it from him.

To her, it’s a home where many fantastic memories were made before 1998.

“It’s always been my home,” the 31-year-old said.

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She was just a child when the world she knew came to a grinding halt. The doting big sister raced through the neighborhood on her bike calling out Maddie’s name when the 8-year-old didn’t come home for supper at nightfall on Nov. 3, 1998.

Seven days later, a police officer who had camped out at her house while the search for Maddie Clifton was on, rose from the floor in Jessie Clifton’s bedroom where they were playing Monopoly and didn’t come back again. Maddie’s body was found.

Jessie, 11 at the time, raced out of the house and fell to her knees landing on the concrete and cried out.

Nineteen years later, she cried out again in a Duval County courtroom when she looked at Maddie’s killer, Joshua Phillips, someone who had been young too when the world he knew dissolved on the same day as well.

The day the 14-year-old killed Maddie, the Clifton family dynamic died. A marriage failed. The laughter silenced.

“I can tell you as a child — much like you were — when you took my best friend, I lost my childhood too. I lost Mom. I lost my dad. And I lost myself,” 30-year-old Jessie Clifton tearfully testified Thursday on the last day of Phillips’ re-sentencing hearing.

“Having to wake up every day in the circus around my house that was supposed to be Mom, Dad, Maddie going on vacations, going fishing, going skiing was spent for seven days waking up in fear and not knowing the unknown,” she said. “What that did to me as an 11-year-old is very hard to explain.

“I was alone and I tried so hard to be so strong because I knew if I fell apart, my parents would fall apart. So I tried so hard to keep a smile on their faces. After the funeral, I don’t really know if I can tell what happened until after I graduated from high school because I don’t remember. I don’t remember anything. I went through counseling — multiple counseling sessions.

“I sat in the dark not knowing what happened. I knew she was gone.”

It wasn’t until Jessie Clifton was 16 that she learned more about her sister’s death at the hands of their neighbor. With that knowledge came another round of counseling sessions.

Over the course of 19 years, there has been largely one narrative when telling little Maddie’s demise. The story, easily one of Northeast Florida’s most horrific and tragic murder cases, goes this way: A 14-year-old boy fearful of his father panics when his 8-year-old neighbor friend won’t stop crying after being accidentally struck by a baseball, so he takes her inside his house and kills her and shoves the body under his waterbed. A week later the boy’s mother finds Maddie entombed beneath her son’s bed.

That narrative was bad enough to send the young teen away to an adult prison for life. But that’s not the story that played out in court this week for Phillips’ resentencing hearing.

Instead, a packed courtroom full of attorneys, family members and friends of Maddie and Phillips heard about a boy who was in a sexually aroused state when he killed the little girl. They learned Maddie was clad only in a red T-shirt and white socks. They learned that Phillips’ watched violent pornography and possibly of underaged girls. And they learned that Phillips had books on devil worships and witchcraft. They learned that Phillips was obsessed with Jessie.

“Jessie Clifton: She’s afraid that if he gets out, he will come after her,” said Assistant State Attorney Bernie de la Rionda.

At the start of the re-sentencing hearing, de la Rionda portrayed Phillips as diabolical. He’s spent the better part of the week trying to hammer home the idea now that Phillips has a chance of getting out of prison.

Phillips’ case is one of some 800 in Florida coming back to the courts now that U.S. Supreme Court decisions have said it is unlawful to automatically sentence killers who were juveniles at the time of the murder to a life behind bars. Life is an option, but it must be left for the very worst cases.

Jessie Clifton, father Steven Clifton and mother Sheila DeLongis implored Judge Waddell Wallace to keep Phillips, now 33, in jail for the remainder of his life.

“When I needed someone to talk to, there was nobody because nobody understood,” Jessie Clifton testified. “Nobody understood me and there were theses days where I go to the cemetery and I’d sit down in the grass because I don’t have anyone to talk to and I just talk to her in the ground.

“There is no reason I believe — I just can’t bring myself to think that you should ever ever be able to walk outside of prison because she can’t,” she said. “It’s just not fair and you should have to pay the consequences for that.”

A date for the resentencing will be set sometime after Sept. 22 when de la Rionda and defense attorney Tom Fallis meet with the judge again.

“Should he ever be released from prison, I pray I will no longer be on this Earth,” DeLongis testified. “Because I know deep down inside he was after Jessie and I can’t bare to lose another daughter.”

https://www.jacksonville.com/news/20170810/19-years-later-narrative-behind-maddie-cliftons-demise-gets-even-worse

Kristel Maestas Teen Killer Murders Man

Kristel Maestas was sixteen when she took part in a kidnapping and murder in Florida. According to court documents Kristel, fifteen year old Renee Lincks and seventeen year old Ronald Bell Jr would kidnap a man who allegedly made a pass at one of the girls. The trio would bring the man to a remote location where he was beaten with a bat, tied to a tree and set on fire. The trio came back the next day to find the man still alive so they slit his throat. This teen killer would be convicted of all charges and sentenced to life in prison

Kristel Maestas 2023 Information

DC Number:	P10752
Name:	MAESTAS, KRISTEL R
Race:	WHITE
Sex:	FEMALE
Birth Date:	03/11/1982
Initial Receipt Date:	04/28/2000
Current Facility:	LOWELL C.I.
Current Custody:	CLOSE
Current Release Date:	SENTENCED TO LIFE

Kristel Maestas Resentencing

Long years of torment torment for the family of Cordell Richards ended Monday when Ronald Bell and Kristel Maestas were each resentenced to life in prison for his 1999 kidnap and murder.

In issuing his ruling, Circuit Court Judge William Stone notified both defendants that he had considered all the relevant factors in each of their cases, including their youth at the time and “all evidence relating to the offense.”

A former airman, the 31-year-old Richards had been missing for just over a month when, on March 4, 1999, a 12-year-old boy playing on an undeveloped lot in the Parish Pointe subdivision discovered his badly decomposed body.

Richards’ remains were found chained to a tree and burned. Assistant State Attorney Bobby Elmore would later tell a jury that just enough of the man’s fingerprints remained to allow for identification. Investigators learned that he had been horribly tortured for a full day before his death.

The resentencing of the pair, who killed Richards when Bell was 17 and Maestas 16, was ordered following a 5-4 U.S. Supreme Court originally published on June 23, 2012. Justices ruled at that time that mandatory life sentences without parole for juveniles were unconstitutional.

“The only thing I can say is my family and I are still just in shock we had to go through this in court, Reanna Richards, Richards daughter, said after Monday’s hearing. “I thank God the judge found the wisdom to rule the way he did.”

Both Bell and Maestas, who are now in their 30s and have spent more than half of their lives in prison, appeared in court for their sentencing.

Bell showed no emotion as Stone re-sentenced not only to life in prison for one count of first degree murder, but also to a consecutive live sentence for kidnapping with a weapon.

Maestas, however, openly wept during the proceedings. She will serve life in prison for the killing of Richards and 30 years consecutive to that for her role in the kidnapping, Stone said.

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Ronald Bell 2021

Ronald Bell is currently incarcerated at the Taylor Correctional Institute

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Ronald Bell 2021 Information

DC Number:	P10751
Name:	BELL, RONALD L JR.
Race:	BLACK
Sex:	MALE
Birth Date:	04/01/1981
Initial Receipt Date:	05/16/2000
Current Facility:	TAYLOR C.I.
Current Custody:	CLOSE
Current Release Date:	SENTENCED TO LIFE

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Ronald Lee Bell, Jr., was found guilty by a jury of first-degree murder with a deadly weapon and armed kidnaping with a weapon. Bell was seventeen years and ten months of age at the time that these crimes were committed. He lived with his parents and was a high school senior. The victim of both crimes was Cordell Richards and the crimes occurred on February 2 and 3, 1999. The testimony at trial detailed the following sequence of events.

On March 4, 1999, Richards’ decomposing body was found in a wooded area at the end of a cul-de-sac in an undeveloped portion of a housing subdivision in Okaloosa County. Richards’ remains, which were partially skeletonized and burned, were tied to a tree with a chain and a rope.

Dr. Michael Berkland, the medical examiner, inspected the remains at the scene and then performed the autopsy. Dr. Berkland found that the body was in an advanced state of decomposition and that there were multiple fractures to the head, which were the result of blunt force trauma. He also found injury to the victim’s shoulder blade, sternum, ribs, arm and wrist. Based upon the burn patterns, Dr. Berkland concluded that the burning occurred post-mortem. Dr. Berkland also concluded that the manner of death was homicidal violence with combined features of blunt force trauma to the head, body, and upper extremities, and probable chop injury to the left neck.

Kimberly Maestas, Renee Lincks, and Bell were all charged with the murder of Richards.¹ Maestas and Lincks testified against Bell, and the testimony regarding the events leading up to the homicide of Richards came primarily from them.² At the time of the homicide, Bell, who was seventeen, and Maestas, who was sixteen, had been dating for a few months. Maestas had been “kicked out” of her parents’ home. Maestas and Bell met Richards through a newspaper listing advertising a place to live, and Maestas moved into the extra bedroom in Richards’ apartment. Richards was thirty-one years of age.

Maestas testified that after she moved into Richards’ apartment, Richards made inappropriate sexual advances. Richards would come into Maestas’s room wearing only bikini underwear. One time Richards propositioned her for sex. Maestas testified that when she said “no,” Richards grabbed her shoulders and pushed her against the wall. She started to cry and asked him not to do that. Richards pushed her against the wall a second time and she hit her head. Maestas testified that Bell found out about Richards’ attack when he saw the bruises on Maestas’s back.

Lincks, who was fifteen, was a friend of Maestas, and came to the apartment to spend the night with her. That night, Richards asked Maestas and Lincks if they wanted to sleep with him in his bed. This made Maestas and Lincks uncomfortable, and so Lincks called a friend, who took them to Bell’s house. Bell later took Maestas and Lincks back to Richards’ apartment and left a baseball bat with them in case something happened. Later, Richards called Maestas and Lincks from his bedroom telephone and made statements that upset them, so they paged Bell and he came to the apartment to help them.

When Bell entered the apartment, he confronted Richards about his behavior towards Maestas and Lincks. Bell and Richards started pushing one another. Bell placed Richards in a choke hold and Richards lost consciousness. Bell told Lincks to get the bat and she gave it to Maestas. Maestas hit Richards in the legs with the bat. Bell told Lincks to get a rope from his car ³ and a blanket from Richards’ bed. Richards was tied with the rope, rolled in the blanket and placed in Bell’s car. Bell then drove to a wooded area at the end of a cul-de-sac.

Kristel Maestas held the flashlight while Bell and Lincks carried Richards into the woods. At some point they stopped, and Bell told Maestas to shine the flashlight in Richards’ face while Lincks asked Richards for his PIN numbers. Bell then told Maestas to hit Richards with the baseball bat, which she did, and Richards asked Bell not to kill him. Lincks also hit Richards with the baseball bat. According to Maestas and Lincks, Bell told them that they were not hitting Richards hard enough and so Bell hit Richards very hard and said, “Look, I’m Babe Ruth.” They then carried Richards deeper into the woods and tied and chained him to a tree. Maestas testified that Bell poured lighter fluid on Richards and set Richards on fire while he was still alive and groaning.

Bell returned to the scene a few more times. He first returned later that day with Kristel Maestas and Lincks to make sure that Richards was dead. Bell and Lincks went into the woods while Maestas waited at the car. Bell and Lincks could hear Richards yelling for help. When Bell and Lincks returned to the car, Lincks told Maestas that Bell had tried to break Richards’ neck. They left the scene and drove to a Target store where they bought a meat cleaver and duct tape and then returned to Richards’ location. Bell and Lincks went back into the woods, where Bell cut Richards’ throat. The two then returned to Maestas five or ten minutes later. Bell went back to the body again after he and Lincks decided that Bell had not cut Richards’ throat enough.

That night, a friend of Bell’s came over and helped to forge checks on Richards’ account. A few days later, they pawned Richards’ television and violin. About a week after that, Bell, Maestas and Maestas’s fourteen-year-old sister went to Richards’ location again. Richards was dead at this time. Bell poured gasoline on the body and started a fire.

On February 13, 1999, the police went to Richards’ apartment to check on Richards’ whereabouts after one of Richards’ friends told the police that he had been unable to contact Richards. The officers tried to get the attention of anyone who might be in the apartment by pounding on the doors and windows. When no one responded, one of the officers entered the apartment through a window. One of the bedroom doors was secured with a deadbolt lock and a towel was stuffed underneath the door. The officers knocked on the bedroom door and Bell opened it. Kristel Maestas was in a sleeping bag on the floor. Bell and Maestas appeared to be just waking up. They denied knowing anything about Richards’ whereabouts.

After the State presented its case, Bell waived his right to present evidence and his right to testify. The jury thereafter found Bell guilty of first-degree murder with a deadly weapon and armed kidnaping with a weapon

https://caselaw.findlaw.com/fl-supreme-court/1218712.html

Kristel Maestas More News

Three teenagers charged with murdering a man by
burning him alive and then slashing his throat while he was tied to a
tree will be prosecuted as adults, a grand jury has decided.

The panel indicted the young man and two young women on charges of
first-degree murder and kidnapping Thursday in the death of Persian Gulf
War veteran Cordell Richards, 31, of Fort Walton Beach.

Okaloosa County sheriff’s investigators said the apparent motive was
revenge for alleged sexual advances the victim made toward one of the
girls.

Assistant State Attorney Bobby Elmore said prosecutors haven’t decided
whether to seek the death penalty against Ronald Bell Jr., 18, of Mary
Esther, and his girlfriend, Kristel Maestas, 17, of Fort Walton Beach.
The only other penalty for first-degree murder is life in prison without
parole.

The third defendant, Renee Lincks, 16, of Fort Walton Beach, was 15
when Richards was killed in late January or early February. The Florida
Supreme court has ruled that a person cannot be executed for a crime
committed when 15 or younger.

The three teens were removed from a juvenile detention facility in
Pensacola and taken to the Okaloosa County Jail in Crestview after being
indicted.

A fourth teen, April Maestas, the 14-year-old sister of Kristel Maestas,
remained at the juvenile facility under a charge of accessory after the
fact to murder.

She is accused of helping her sister and Bell try to destroy evidence by
burning the body a second time about two weeks after the killing in an
empty lot. The body wasn’t found until about a month after the murder.

No decision has been made on whether April Maestas will be tried as an
adult. If so, she could get a sentence of up to 30 years in prison if
convicted.

Deputies said Kristel Maestas, who was renting a room in Richards’
apartment, and Lincks lured the victim into a compromising situation so
Bell could knock him out by striking him in the head with a flashlight.

Richards was taken to an isolated area where he was beaten with bats and
sticks and set on fire. His throat was slashed once the fire was out to
make sure he died, investigators said.

Lacy Aaron Schmidt Teen Killer Murders Ex Girlfriend

Lacy Aaron Schmidt was fourteen years old when he murdered his fourteen year old ex girlfriend. According to court documents Schmidt planned the murder for several weeks before the crime took place. The night before the murder he stole a gun from the victim’s father.

On the day of the murder Schmidt would walk behind the victim as she looked on her phone and fatally shot her in the back of the head. This teen killer would be sentenced to life in prison without parole

Lacy Aaron Schmidt 2023 Information

YOB: 1996
RACE: WHITE
GENDER: MALE
HEIGHT: 6’02”
WEIGHT: 157
EYE COLOR: BROWN
HAIR COLOR: BLN&STR

MAJOR OFFENSE: MURDER
MOST RECENT INSTITUTION: HAYS STATE PRISON
MAX POSSIBLE RELEASE DATE: LIFE, W/O PAROLE

Lacy Aaron Schmidt Other News

The Georgia Supreme Court has upheld the murder conviction of a Columbia County teenager sentenced to life without parole for murdering his 14 year-old neighbor in Harlem. Schmidt shot and killed Alana Calahan, his friend and one-time girlfriend, at her home in January of 2011.

In February of 2012, Lacy Aaron Schmidt was convicted of malice murder, felony murder while in the commission of aggravated assault, possession of a firearm during the commission of the crime, and theft by taking a handgun.

Prosecutors say Lacy Aaron Schmidt planned the shooting and stole a handgun from Alana’s father days earlier. They say he shot her in the back of the head while the Harlem Middle School student was on Facebook uploading photos, then dragged the body to the woods behind the home to cover up the crime.

Lacy Aaron Schmidt was sentenced to life without parole, five years for possession of a firearm and 10 years for theft to be served consecutive to the life sentence.

Schmidt appealed to the Georgia Supreme Court, arguing Judge Michael Annis did not let jurors know they could chose to find Schmidt guilty of involuntary manslaughter, a less serious charge.Lacy Aaron Schmidt also claimed his trial attorney was ineffective and that his sentence was “cruel and unusual punishment.”

Presiding Justice P. Harris Hines, however, says the high court has rejected all his arguments. He finds the evidence “was sufficient to enable a rational trier of fact to find Lacy Aaron Schmidt guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of the crimes of which he was convicted.”

Lacy Aaron Schmidt More News

On January 31, 2011, fourteen-year-old Alana Calahan was fatally shot while in her home in Columbia County. Schmidt, who was then also fourteen years old, lived nearby on the same street and he and Alana were friends. The two were “boyfriend and girlfriend” for a brief time until Alana’s youth pastor advised her that she was too young for such a relationship. Nonetheless, Schmidt spent a lot of time with Alana and her family.

About a week before Alana’s murder, Schmidt entered the Calahan house when no one in the family was home; Alana was the first to arrive home and noticed that the door to the house was unlocked. Alana’s mother asked Schmidt how he got into the house, and Schmidt responded that the door had been left unlocked.

The mother did not believe him and angrily told him that he could not come to the house unless she or her husband was there. Schmidt was also forbidden to come over before 5:00 p. m. on week days. The family kept a shotgun and a handgun in the parents’ master bedroom, and the children were not allowed to enter the bedroom or touch the guns.

On the day of the murder, as Alana’s sister was waiting in the family pickup truck to transport Alana from the school bus drop off location to their house, Schmidt appeared and told the sister that he was not allowed to come over for the next two weeks. After the school bus driver dropped off Alana, the driver saw Schmidt walking nearby; Schmidt had his hands in his pockets and the hood from his jacket was pulled over his head. Immediately after the drop off, Alana was picked up by her sister and taken home.

About twenty or thirty minutes later, the sister left the house to pick up their brother from the bus stop. At that time, Alana was at a computer, which was located beside the house’s sliding back door. During the approximately ten minutes the sister was gone, Schmidt entered the house, shot Alana in the back of the neck, and dragged her to the woods outside the house. Alana died from the gunshot wound to her neck.

The sister returned and saw Schmidt’s shoes inside the house, along with Alana’s shoes; it was common practice for family and friends to take their shoes off upon entering the house. The sister observed that the chair that Alana had been sitting in was knocked over and there was blood, later identified as Alana’s, all over the carpet. Schmidt came into the house through the front door and told the sister that someone had taken Alana and that he did not know what to do. Schmidt then went outside with Alana’s sister and brother, ostensibly to help in the search for Alana.

Schmidt quickly said he spotted Alana, pointed in a certain direction, and led the siblings to Alana’s body. The sister did not believe that Schmidt could have seen the body from his initial vantage point. Schmidt approached Alana’s body, and tried to pull a stick out of her hair; he then “started freaking out saying, oh, my [G]od, now my prints are on her and they’re going to think I killed her.” Schmidt did not cry upon seeing the body. The sister unsuccessfully attempted to revive Alana, and called police.

The police arrived to find Alana’s sister and brother crying and screaming, but Schmidt displayed absolutely no emotion; indeed, Schmidt acted as if “there was [not] a care in the world.” During police interviews, Schmidt exhibited conduct which raised suspicion, including attempts to cry which appeared to be disingenuous. After telling the police at least five different stories about what transpired, Schmidt admitted to having taken Alana’s father’s handgun from the master bedroom, and allegedly accidentally shooting Alana with it as he stood behind her attempting to unload it.

However, it was later determined that in the position of the handgun mechanism as described by Schmidt, 13 pounds of pressure would have to be applied to the trigger in order to fire the handgun. Investigators later searched Schmidt’s residence and found a gun box, ammunition, and an owner’s manual for the murder weapon. The police determined that it was not possible for Schmidt to have brought the gun box to his home during the brief interval in which Alana was shot, and that he would have had to obtain it beforehand.

In Schmidt’s book bag, stashed in his bedroom closet, police found other items belonging to the Calahan family, including an iPod, RCA MP3 player, and a digital camera. Alana’s house keys were thought to be lost prior to her death, but were found several weeks later under mats on the floor of the Calahan family’s pickup, to which Schmidt had access.

Lacy Aaron Schmidt Resentencing

The Georgia Supreme Court has upheld the murder conviction and life prison sentence for a 14-year-old boy who shot and killed a 14-year-old girl in the east Georgia town of Harlem.

Authorities said the boy, Lacy Aaron Schmidt, went to his friend Alana Calahan’s house and shot her in the back of the neck in January 2011. They say he then dragged her into nearby woods, where she died from the gunshot wound, and later tried to make it appear that someone had abducted her.

Schmidt appealed his conviction to the Georgia Supreme Court, saying a judge and his lawyer had made legal mistakes, and that his sentence amounted to cruel and unusual punishment.

The court said Monday that his arguments were rejected, and his conviction and sentence were upheld.

https://www.wtxl.com/news/state-high-court-upholds-boy-s-conviction-in-killing-of/article_ab65991e-5aeb-11e5-bd0d-bbf0cc1153a0.html

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Shawn Ford Teen Killer Sledgehammer Murders

Shawn Ford was eighteen years old when he murdered his girlfriend’s parents with a sledgehammer in Ohio. According to court documents Shawn Ford had stabbed his girlfriend ten days prior to the brutal murders and were upset with the parents for not allowing him to visit her in the hospital. Shawn Ford would go to the Ohio home with his fourteen year old cousin Jamal Vaughn and the two would break into the home. Shawn Ford would attack the victims with a sledgehammer causing their death. Jamal Vaughn would later be sentenced to twenty five years to life. Shawn Ford would be sentenced to death. Later on the teen killer death sentence would be questioned due to his low IQ and he is currently going through a resentencing process

Ohio Death Row Inmate List

Shawn Ford 2023 Information

Number A671786

DOB 09/30/1994

Gender Male

Race Black Admission Date07/02/2015

Institution Chillicothe Correctional Institution

Status INCARCERATED

Shawn Ford More News

A man convicted of killing his ex-girlfriend’s parents with a sledgehammer 10 days after stabbing their daughter was sentenced Monday to death.

Shawn Ford Jr., 20, was convicted in October by a jury in Summit County Common Pleas Court of aggravated murder and other charges in the April 2013 slayings of Margaret and Jeffrey Schobert. That same jury recommended that he receive the death penalty for killing Margaret Schobert, and the judge agreed.

Ford, wearing an orange jail jumpsuit, his wrists bound with handcuffs, said before sentencing that he’d been “selfish” and “stupid.”

“I want to say sorry to the whole Schobert family, sorry to my family, sorry to everybody I let down,” he said.

Defense attorneys unsuccessfully argued that Ford’s low IQ prevented Judge Tom Parker from sentencing their client to death.

Authorities said Jeffrey Schobert, a prominent attorney, was killed inside the couple’s home in the Akron suburb of New Franklin. Ford and an accomplice who was 14 at the time sent text messages to Margaret Schobert to lure her home from a hospital where she’d been spending the night with her daughter.

Prosecutors said Ford was angry with the Schoberts because they wouldn’t let him visit their daughter, Chelsea, at the hospital. Ford was accused of stabbing and critically injuring Chelsea Schobert 10 days earlier for refusing him sex at a party.

Chelsea Schobert, 20, testified at Ford’s trial that after her life spiraled out of control after her parents’ death. She said she used inheritance money to buy cocaine to sell with her new boyfriend. She was caught, convicted of drug trafficking and sentenced in June 2014 to 30 months in prison. She was granted an early release in May.

Ford’s accomplice, Jamall Vaughn, who is now 16, pleaded guilty to aggravated murder and aggravated robbery charges in February. He is scheduled to be sentenced Tuesday.

Death penalty cases in Ohio are automatically appealed to the state Supreme Court.

https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/sledgehammer-killer-shawn-ford-sentenced_n_7691818?ri18n=true

Shawn Ford Other News

The Ohio Supreme Court has heard oral arguments in the case of a man convicted of killing his ex-girlfriend’s parents with a sledgehammer 10 days after stabbing their daughter.

Shawn Ford Jr. was convicted by a Summit County jury in 2015 of aggravated murder and other charges in the slayings of Margaret and Jeffrey Schobert two years earlier.

That same jury recommended the 24-year-old Ford receive the death penalty for killing Margaret Schobert, and the judge agreed.

The high court heard arguments Tuesday.

Defense attorneys argue that Ford’s low IQ should have prevented the judge from sentencing their client to death. Prosecutors said the judge heeded the advice of multiple experts that Ford did not prove he was mentally disabled.

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Shawn Ford is currently incarcerated at the Chillicothe Correctional Institution the home of Ohio Death Row

Shawn Ford Execution

Shawn Ford execution has yet to be scheduled

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Shawn Ford More News

The Ohio Supreme Court today unanimously affirmed the murder convictions of an Akron man who admitted to killing his girlfriend’s parents with a sledgehammer. But the Court ordered a new hearing to determine if the man has an intellectual disability that bars the state from imposing the death penalty for one of the murders.

The Court ruled 5-2 to vacate Shawn Ford Jr.’s death sentence for the aggravated murder of Margaret Schobert. The Court determined the trial court used a standard developed in 2002 to find Ford was not intellectually disabled and that, based on U.S. Supreme Court decisions in 2014 and 2017, the trial court failed to use an updated standard to evaluate Ford.

Writing for the Court majority, Justice Melody J. Stewart stated the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that intellectually disabled individuals cannot receive the death penalty. The U.S. Supreme Court has adopted newer diagnostic standards from the leading American psychological associations, and those standards must be used to evaluate Ford, the Court ruled. Ford was 18 years old at the time of the 2013 murder and diagnosed in the “low average range of intelligence” at the onset of his trial.

“Under these circumstances, we have no confidence in the trial court’s determination based on its application of an improper standard,” she wrote.

The Court remanded the case to the trial court for further proceedings.

Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor and Justices Judith L. French, Patrick F. Fischer, and Michael P. Donnelly joined the decision.

Justice R. Patrick DeWine concurred with the majority in upholding Ford’s conviction, but dissented to state that the death penalty was justified. He wrote that three experts evaluated Ford’s intellectual ability after he was sentenced to death and all concluded he was not intellectually disabled.

Justice Sharon L. Kennedy joined Justice DeWine’s opinion.

Chelsea Schobert began dating Ford in 2012 and, in March 2013, she celebrated her 18th birthday with Ford and two others at a friend’s Akron home. They all began drinking and became highly intoxicated. Ford and Chelsea went to a bedroom, and Chelsea later said Ford wanted to have sex with her, but she refused. At one point she told him, “I hate you,” and he hit her in the head with a brick. One of the friends heard the encounter and went to the bedroom to intervene. Ford left the room, returned with a knife, and stabbed Chelsea in the neck and back.

Ford then drove Chelsea to a hospital, where they learned she suffered a spinal injury from the assault that had lasting effects. Ford, Chelsea, and their friends initially agreed to mislead the police about the incident and claim that Chelsea was assaulted at a party in Kent.

As police investigated the incident, Chelsea was placed in a secured area of Akron Children’s Hospital, and her parents, Jeffery and Margaret, did not permit Ford to visit her.

On April 1, Jeffrey Schobert left the hospital to return to their home in New Franklin, an Akron suburb near the border of Portage County. His wife Margaret remained with Chelsea until about 6 a.m. the next morning. That afternoon, a building contractor working on the Schobert’s home found Jeffrey’s and Margaret’s bodies in their bedrooms. Both had massive head wounds. A sledgehammer was lying on the bed next to Jeffrey, and his car was missing. Medical examiners determined that Jeffrey died from being struck at least 14 times with the sledgehammer and Margaret died from at least 19 blows with the hammer.

At the time the bodies were discovered, Portage County authorities already had issued a warrant for Ford for lying about Chelsea’s assault. New Franklin police learned about Chelsea’s attack and her parents preventing Ford from seeing her in the hospital. They questioned Ford, who denied involvement, and took him to the Portage County jail.

The next day, police were informed that a fellow inmate of Ford’s learned the location of Jeffrey’s car, and police discovered it along with gloves, a knife, and a knit hat inside a storm drain in front of a house where a friend of Ford’s lived. Police discovered one of Margaret’s watches in the friend’s bedroom.

On April 3 and 4, detectives interviewed Ford and told him about the evidence they uncovered, and Ford eventually confessed to killing the Schoberts, and stealing money, jewelry, and the car.

On April 5, Ford made a recorded phone call from the Summit County jail to his brother, and discussed the murders during the call.

DNA and forensic testing showed that Margaret and Jeffrey’s blood was on shoes and clothing belonging to Ford.

Ford was charged with five counts of aggravated murder and six other charges, including aggravated robbery, and the felonious assault of Chelsea. The jury convicted him of all charges and unanimously recommended the death penalty for the murder of Margaret.

Prior to the trial, the judge conducted two pretrial hearings to determine if Ford was competent to stand trial and whether he was intellectually disabled. He was found competent and not intellectually disabled. After the jury returned the death verdict, Ford’s attorneys asked the Court to dismiss the death sentences, and the court conducted a hearing to determine if Ford was intellectually disabled. The judge ruled Ford was not disabled, and affirmed the death penalty.

Death penalty convictions are automatically appealed to the Ohio Supreme Court. Ford raised 23 objections, known as propositions of law, to his convictions and sentence. The Court overruled nearly all of them, but in a few cases found errors by the trial court. Those errors were determined to be harmless and they would not affect the outcome of the guilt phase of the case, the majority opinion stated, because of the overwhelming DNA evidence and Ford’s confession.

Justice Stewart explained that after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2002 that executing intellectually disabled persons violated the U.S. Constitution’s Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment, states were charged with developing appropriate ways to enforce the restriction.

The Ohio Supreme Court established its criteria in its 2002 State v. Lott decision, which defined an intellectual disability as “(1) significantly subaverage intellectual functioning, (2) significant limitations in two or more adaptive skills, such as communication, self-care, and self-direction, and (3) onset before age 18.” Lott also stated that a person is presumed not to be intellectually disabled if their intelligence quotient (IQ) is above 70.

In 2010, the American Association on Intellectual and Development Disabilities updated its medical diagnostic standards, and the American Psychiatric Association followed in 2013. The new definition of intellectually disability now recognizes that an IQ score should not be viewed as a fixed number, but a range within a statistical margin of error. And instead of finding a deficit in two or more adaptive skills, a disability could be a deficit in one or more activities of daily life.

In its 2014 Hall v. Florida and 2017 Moore v. Texas decisions, the U.S. Supreme Court adopted the updated standards for determining a disability. Today’s majority opinion stated that Ohio courts must also use this updated standard to determine the intelligence of an offender sentenced to death.

Three experts — one representing the prosecution, one representing Ford, and another appointed to assist the court — testified at the hearing after the jury voted for the death penalty.

The court’s expert conducted a detailed review of Ford’s school records and evaluations and found he was never diagnosed as intellectually disabled, but was found to have a learning disability. The expert examined five IQ tests administered to Ford between ages 6 and 19 and found scores that ranged between 62 and 80.

The expert also examined an adaptive skills test he took in third grade and she conducted her own test, as well as interviewing and observing Ford, interviewing his mother, and reviewing school achievement tests. She found no significant deficits in his adaptive skills.

The prosecution’s expert gave Ford an IQ test in which he scored a 79, and he received a score on the adaptive skills test that indicated his daily living skills fell in the “moderately low range.” The expert concluded there were not significant deficits in his adaptive functioning and he was not intellectually disabled.

Ford refused to be interviewed by the expert hired by his defense attorneys, but the doctor was able to review his records and meet with his mother. The expert testified that Ford scored a 75 on an IQ test he took in 2006 when he was 12. With the updated margin of error, Ford’s actual IQ could have been between 69 and 83, meaning he could be below 70. The expert discounted the two other tests where Ford scored below 70 because of his impulsive behavior and poor attention.

The defense expert also looked at Ford’s adaptive skills test and found a 2003 score that was between “mild mental retardation and borderline intelligence.” After having Ford’s mother complete an assessment of her son in 2013, the expert found Ford’s score was below average for social behavior. The expert testified that there was insufficient evidence to conclude Ford was intellectually disabled.

The majority opinion stated that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that when an IQ test score is below 70 and when adjusted for the margin of error, the score alone is not enough to determine the question of disability. The trial court must examine the other areas, including the adaptive skills, to adequately test Ford’s ability, the Court said.

The trial court failed to consider that Ford had a score in the range of 69-83. In addition, the Court noted Ford scored a 78 on a 2001 IQ test when he was age 6 or 7. Adjusting for what is known as the “Flynn Effect,” in which IQ scores appear inflated if an older test is administered, the Court also noted the test Ford took in 2001 was developed in 1983. One of the experts explained his score could have been inflated by 6 points, meaning his “fixed score” on that test was a 72. If the trial court were to examine the 72 score using the margin of error it could find a second score below 70, the experts maintained.

The majority opinion stated the trial court is not bound to recognize the Flynn Effect, but must discuss it in its new finding regarding Ford’s abilities.

The Court also noted that by using the Lott test, the trial court evaluated Ford’s abilities based on the fact that no expert diagnosed him with “two or more” adaptive skills deficits. The new standard requires a finding of only one deficit, and the defense’s expert raised questions as to whether Ford had a social behavior deficit, the opinion noted.

“Accordingly, we remand this matter to the trial court to properly determine whether Ford is intellectually disabled,” the opinion concluded.

In his concurring and dissenting opinion, Justice DeWine explained the burden of proof was on Ford to demonstrate he was intellectually disabled and “he came nowhere near meeting his burden.”

The opinion noted Ford’s own expert was “hamstrung” by Ford’s refusal to allow him to conduct an interview, but noted that on many prior occasions Ford was evaluated by educational professionals and psychologists and had never been given a diagnosis of intellectual disability. When his own expert testified there was insufficient evidence to conclude Ford had a disability, Ford did not challenge the conclusion, or argue that the expert used the wrong standard, the opinion stated.

Nor did Ford did object to the opinions of the other two experts.

“It’s not surprising, then, that the trial court found that Ford had not met his burden to prove he has an intellectual disability,” the concurring and dissenting opinion stated.

Justice DeWine wrote that while there is room for improving the test laid out in Lott, the evidence indicates that even under the new standards, Ford would not be able to prove he was intellectually disabled.

“Every expert opined that Ford does not have an intellectual disability. To remand this case in the face of such strong evidence is simply wrong as a matter of law,” the opinion stated.

http://www.courtnewsohio.gov/cases/2019/SCO/1107/151309.asp#.YMvyxfLYrrc