DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) - The Iowa Supreme Court on Friday upheld the conviction and 24-year prison sentence of an Iowa City man who fired shots into a crowded pedestrian mall in August 2017, killing one man and injuring two others.
Lamar Wilson, 26, claimed a stand-your-ground law the Iowa Legislature passed earlier in 2017 granted him immunity from prosecution. He said the judge should have held a hearing before the trial to consider his stand-your-ground rights.
The trial judge, however, concluded the Iowa law does not grant immunity from prosecution and doesn’t require a pretrial hearing.
A jury convicted Wilson in 2018 and the judge sentenced him to 24 years with a five-year mandatory minimum sentence.
The Supreme Court found that while several states afford immunity from prosecution in their stand-your-ground laws, Iowa lawmakers didn’t.
The court also concluded that trial evidence indicated Wilson lacked justification to shoot at a group of men from Cedar Rapids during a heated argument on the Iowa City pedestrian mall.
“There was ample evidence of lack of justification. The evidence was essentially undisputed that Wilson started the verbal confrontation when the two groups passed each other on the pedestrian mall. Later, Wilson fired first,” the court said.
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