New sentencing hearing for Baker set for April 3

By Editor | March 15, 2017 |

A new sentencing hearing has been confirmed for a Loogootee resident who was convicted of murdering a neighbor couple about 6½ years ago.

During a telephone conference call last Thursday, the parties involved in the new sentencing for Clifford W. Baker agreed to hold the hearing on Monday, April 3.
Fayette County State’s Attorney Joshua Morrison and Fayette County Public Defender William Starnes participated in that conference call with Judge Allan Lollie, who will sentence Baker.
Baker, who is now 22, was convicted in October 2011 of murdering John Michael “Mike” Mahon and Debra Tish in their home in the early morning hours of Aug. 4, 2010.
In addition to being found guilty of first-degree murder, Baker was convicted on charges of home invasion.
Judge Michael McHaney handed down a mandatory life sentence for Baker on the murder charges, and sentenced him to 30 years for home invasion.
Baker appealed the convictions and sentences, challenging the constitutionality of the automatic transfer provision (under which Baker was tried as an adult), the constitutionality of the sentencing scheme as applied to juvenile defendants, the propriety of certain procedural and evidentiary rulings by the trial court and the effectiveness of his trial counsel,” according to the appeal ruling filed in the office of Fayette County Circuit Clerk Kathy Emerick.
In that document, a panel of three appellate court judges agree 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 no mandatory,” the appellate ruling states.
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.”