Court rejects teen’s 112-year sentence

Columbus, Ohio — A divided Ohio Supreme Court has overturned a convicted rapist’s 112year prison sentence imposed for crimes committed when he was 15.

The court ruled 4-3 Thursday that the 2008 sentence given to Brandon Moore constitutes cruel and unusual punishment and violates a U.S. Supreme Court mandate against life sentences for juvenile crimes not involving homicides.

Moore, now 29, was tried as an adult and convicted by a jury in the 2001 armed kidnapping, robbery and gang rape of a 22-year-old Youngstown State University student.

Prosecutors argued Moore’s sentence is constitutional because it involved multiple and consecutive sentences and not a single sentence of life without parole.

In 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 vote that teenagers may not be locked up for life without a chance of parole if they haven’t killed anyone.

Mexico fireworks explosions: Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto pledged on Thursday to help rebuild a fireworks market where explosions killed at least 35 people and reopen it next year, while a Roman Catholic church held funeral Masses throughout the day. Families packed Our Lady of Loreto Catholic Church in Tultepec in Mexico State, where chain-reaction blasts destroyed the country’s best-known fireworks market Tuesday. Investigators have still not announced the cause of the tragedy, which was the third explosion at the market since 2005 and cast a pall over Mexico’s Christmas season.

Israeli settlements: Under heavy Israeli pressure, Egypt on Thursday indefinitely postponed a planned U.N. vote on a proposed Security Council resolution that sought to condemn Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, diplomats and Western officials said, just a few hours before the vote was set to take place.