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Murder case hearing delayed

A pretrial hearing related to the resentencing of a Loogootee resident convicted of murdering two residents of that rural community in 2010 has been rescheduled.

Clifford Baker, who in 2011 was convicted of murdering John Michael “Mike” Mahon and Debra Tish in their home in Loogootee in the early morning hours of Aug. 4, 2010, was scheduled to appear in court this Thursday.
But that hearing was continued through a conference call involving Judge Michael D. McHaney and attorneys involved in the case, according to Fayette County Circuit Clerk Kathy Emerick.
Emerick said that another conference call has been scheduled for Feb. 22, and that a sentencing hearing will be set during that call.
McHaney was the judge presiding over Baker’s jury trial in 2011, and he sentenced Baker, who is now 21, to a mandatory life sentence on the murder convictions and 30 years on a home invasion conviction.
A panel of three appellate court judges has ruled that Baker “is entitled to a new sentencing hearing because the imposition of two natural life sentences for offenses he committed when he was 15 years old violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment” under a U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2012.
The appellate document states that the Supreme Court decision “held that mandatory imposition of a life sentence without parole on a person under the age of 18 at the time of their crimes violates the Eighth Amendment.”
Under the decision, “a juvenile defendant can be sentenced to natural life in prison without parole, so long as the natural life sentence is at the trial court’s discretion and not mandatory."
Further, a trial court is required to consider “how children are different, and how those differences counsel against irrevocably sentencing them to life in prison.
“Our supreme court noted that (the decision) does not foreclose the penalty of life without parole for a juvenile defendant convicted of murder, provided that the sentencing court has the discretion to impose a different penalty and takes into consideration the offender’s youth and attendant characteristics before imposing a sentence,” the appellate court document states.
In the Baker case, the document states, the defendant was sentenced to two mandatory terms of natural life (in prison), “and there is no indication that the court considered the defendant’s youth and attendant characteristics.”
 

Clifford Baker

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