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Confessed Nevada Child Killer Seeks Parole, Cites Immaturity

LAS VEGAS (AP) — A confessed killer who has lost several appeals of his life-without-parole sentence in the May 1997 rape and strangulation of a 7-year-old girl in a southern Nevada casino restroom is trying now for a chance at parole.

 

Attorneys for Jeremy Strohmeyer asked a state court judge in Las Vegas on Thursday for a new sentencing hearing because they said their client lacked the emotional and intellectual maturity at the time he killed Sherrice Iverson to control adolescent impulses, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.

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Prosecutor Marc DiGiacomo said that if Strohmeyer gets a new sentencing hearing, the state will seek the death penalty.

 

Strohmeyer was a high school senior in Long Beach, California, and was not yet 19 years old when he strangled Iverson at a casino near the Nevada-California state line.

 

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The case drew intense media attention, and prosecutors said Strohmeyer was seen on casino security videos following Iverson into a restroom where the murder occurred. Strohmeyer's DNA also was found on a cigarette butt in the stall where the girl's body was found.

 

Strohmeyer avoided death row by pleading guilty, and confessed to police that he killed and sexually assaulted the girl because he "wanted to experience death," the state attorney general said in an appeal that the Nevada Supreme Court rejected in 2006.

 

Strohmeyer is now 39. The state Supreme Court also rejected a 2001 appeal to cancel his guilty plea on grounds that his lawyers at the time pressured him into taking the plea deal.

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His current lawyers, Tom Pitaro and Ozzie Fumo, noted Thursday that U.S. Supreme Court rulings in 2012 and 2016 mean that juveniles who received life sentences for killing a single person should have a chance at parole.

 

Temple University professor Laurence Steinberg, a specialist in adolescent psychological development, testified that 16- and 17-year-olds are more impetuous and impulsive than adults and are more likely to make decisions without thinking about future consequences.

 

Steinberg told Clark County District Court Judge Douglas Smith that personalities stabilize when people are in their 20s.

 

The psychologist acknowledged under questioning from DiGiacomo that he did not analyze Strohmeyer, and said he could not gauge Strohmeyer's level of maturity at age 18, the time of the killing.

 

The judge did not make an immediate ruling.