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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowA Lake County man sentenced to an aggregate 225 years lost his pro se appeal after the Indiana Court of Appeals determined his sentence, which included a mix of terms running consecutively and concurrently, did not violate state statute.
Roman Lee Jones was convicted in 1996 on three counts of murder and two counts of attempted murder. The jury recommended that Jones be sentence to death.
However, the Lake Superior Court chose to sentence Jones to 60 years for each of his three murder convictions and 45 years for each of his two attempted murder convictions. The court ordered that the sentences on the three murder convictions and one attempted murder conviction be served consecutively, while the sentence for the other attempted murder conviction be served concurrently with the other sentences.
In March 2018, Jones filed a motion to correct sentence, requesting an order that his sentences be served concurrently. After the trial court denied his motion, he appealed, arguing the lower court erred in sentencing him “to a mixed and blended sentence…in which it lacked statutory authority, according to Indiana Code 35-50-1-2.” The trial court, he asserted, had to choose to run the sentences either concurrently or consecutively and could not incorporate a combination of both.
Citing Wilson v. State, 5 N.E.3d 759, 761 (Ind. 2014), the Court of Appeals said the Indiana Supreme Court held that trial courts did not violate the statute when they fashion an aggregate sentence involving multiple convictions so that some sentences are served concurrently and others served consecutively. Thus, a unanimous appellate panel affirmed the denial of Jones’s motion to correct sentence in Roman Lee Jones v. State of Indiana, 18A-CR-855.
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