Justices direct killer at 15 to new law, deny appeal

A man who four decades ago became a police killer at 15 lost his bid for a new sentence at the Arkansas Supreme Court on Thursday.

The majority of the justices ruled that John Lohbauer, now 56, has already been made eligible for parole by a resentencing law enacted for those convicted as minors. The Legislature passed the law last year in order to comply with the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that life-without-parole sentences for youths violate the U.S. Constitution.

Despite the court’s ruling Thursday, Lohbauer’s attorney, Patrick Benca, said the inmate has no realistic chance of being paroled.

Benca said he plans to appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court. In a statement, Attorney General Leslie Rutledge praised the Arkansas court’s decision and said Lohbauer’s sentence does not violate the Constitution.

The state Parole Board has already heard Lohbauer’s case and issued repeated denials, Benca said, despite the fact that Lohbauer was a runaway in 1977 when he shot two police officers — one fatally — and that his client has an “unblemished” record in prison.

None of the high court’s seven justices said they would have given Lohbauer a chance at a lighter sentence.

The majority opinion by Justice Robin Wynne was joined by Chief Justice Dan Kemp and Justice Courtney Goodson.

An opinion concurring with the outcome, but with a different rationale, was signed by Justices Josephine Hart and Karen Baker.

Justice Shawn Womack dissented in part, saying he would have dismissed Lohbauer’s appeal as moot under the Fair Sentencing of Minors Act, or Act 539, of 2017.

In a dissent, Justice Rhonda Wood said the court did not have enough detail about Lohbauer’s 1977 plea deal and would have remanded the case for more fact-finding.

“It’s totally unsurprising,” said Jeff Rosenzweig, a Little Rock criminal-defense attorney who has worked on several juvenile resentencing cases. He was not involved in Lohbauer’s appeal.

The Arkansas Supreme Court has already said the U.S. high court’s ban on mandatory life-without-parole cases for offenders who were youths does not apply to first-degree murder convictions in Arkansas because those sentences technically carry an opportunity for parole, Rosenzweig said.

In addition to his life sentence, Lohbauer was sentenced to 40 years for crimes that included wounding a second officer, James Clark, on the day Lohbauer killed Texarkana police Lt. Ed Worrell.

According to newspaper archives, Lohbauer had run away from his home in Illinois with two other boys in 1977 and was acting as a lookout when the other boys tried to steal guns and ammunition from a Texarkana sporting goods store. When police arrived, Lohbauer shot them.