Judge Weighs New Sentence For Man Locked Up For Life At 14
CHICAGO (CBS) -- A Cook County judge will rule next month on whether a longtime inmate, originally sentenced to life in prison at age 14, will be released from prison.
Adolfo Davis has spent 24 years for his role in a 1990 double murder but was getting another day in court on Monday.
Davis, dressed in a blue shirt and patterned tie, listened in a crowded courtroom as Cook County Assistant State's Atty. James McKay argued against any leniency.
"This defendant was not a 14-year-old, naïve, scared, merely present lookout," he said. "Make no mistake about it, judge, this defendant was a shooter. At the ripe old age of 14, this defendant was a shooter, an executioner."
Defense attorney Patricia Soung said the hearing isn't about whether Davis is innocent or guilty.
"The question today is about how much punishment is enough, and whether continuing to imprison Adolfo stands for any legitimate purpose," she said.
Soung also disputed witness accounts that Davis was the gunman, and said the jury also might have had doubts, based on a note to the judge in his trial.
"They asked whether Adolfo had to have personally shot anyone to be convicted of first-degree murder. The judge instructed no," she said.
Davis' resentencing hearing on Monday was the result of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that juvenile murderers should not receive automatic sentences of life without parole.
Late Monday, the judge said she will rule on Davis' new sentence on May 4.