MA teen loses bid for lower sentence
A judge has denied a request to reduce the conviction of a teenager who was found guilty of first-degree murder in the fatal stabbing of another boy at a suburban Boston high school.
Lawyers for John Odgren asked that his conviction last April be reduced to second-degree murder, which would make him eligible for parole after 15 years.
But Middlesex Superior Court Judge S. Jane Haggerty rejected the bid on Wednesday.
Odgren is serving a mandatory life sentence in the 2007 killing of 15-year-old James Alenson at Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School. A first-degree murder conviction does not allow the possibility of parole.
Odgren's lawyers say he was a mentally ill 16-year-old when he attacked Alenson.
