Court upholds 42-year sentence for highway sniper
INDIANAPOLIS -- The Indiana Court of Appeals has ruled a Gaston teen who shot and killed a driver from a highway overpass should serve his 42-year prison sentence.
An attorney for 19-year-old Zachariah Blanton had appealed the sentence as inappropriate, arguing that the shooting "was a more or less routine act of manslaughter, if such a thing is said to exist."
But in an eight-page ruling, the court disagreed, noting that the shooting terrorized drivers who had done nothing to make Blanton angry, and the trial court was free to consider that as an aggravating factor in his sentence.
"The harm to the motoring public is inherent to this offense -- randomly and intentionally shooting at cars with a rifle from a highway overpass creates a public fear beyond that of the 'ordinary' manslaughter in which the victim is at least associated with creating the sudden heat that results in the death," the court wrote in its ruling Thursday.
On July 23, 2006, Blanton -- then 17 years old -- fired his hunting rifle into Interstate 65 traffic from an overpass near Seymour, about 60 miles south of Indianapolis, killing 40-year-old Jerry L. Ross of New Albany. An Iowa man traveling in another pickup truck also was injured.
Hours later, Blanton fired on two vehicles in Delaware County. One was unoccupied and he did not strike anyone in the other vehicle.
Blanton pleaded guilty in December to charges of voluntary manslaughter and criminal recklessness. With credit for good behavior and for time served in the Jackson County jail, however, Blanton could be granted his release in about 20 years -- at which point he would still be younger than Jerry Ross was at the time of his death, Ross's twin brother noted at the time of the sentencing, adding "He shouldn't be allowed to live that part of his life free."
The defense said that Blanton had fired at Ross' pickup truck in a sudden heat of anger following an emotional clash with relatives during a deer hunt.
Blanton's attorney, Alan Wilson, also argued among other things that the judge improperly considered Blanton's lack of remorse because the court record did not support such a finding. But the Court of Appeals found that the record did not mention remorse because Blanton never expressed any, and noted that he bragged about his crime while he was in jail.
Ross's family in January filed a Iowa wrongful death lawsuit, ........