Appeals court denies motion for relief from Oktibbeha man serving life for murder

An Oktibbeha County man serving life in prison for the 2002 murder of his girlfriend will see no new progress in his case after the Mississippi Court of Appeals affirmed a ruling by a lower court denying him post-conviction relief.

The state Court of Appeals handed down its ruling on Tuesday, after 54-year-old Bruce Lawrence filed his second motion for post-conviction relief on Oct. 2, 2018, which was denied in Oktibbeha County Circuit Court. The relief would have allowed LAWRENCE him to reexamine various parts of his case or present new evidence at a new hearing.

Lawrence confessed to police that he choked his former girlfriend, Lillian Ingram, with his hands for approximately 30 minutes before strangling her to death with a vacuum cord on Sept. 28, 2002.

He ultimately pleaded guilty to the murder charge and Circuit Judge Lee Howard sentenced him to life in prison on April 27, 2004.

Lawrence has argued he only pleaded guilty “because his lawyer told him he would be sentenced to serve twenty years.”

Court documents show he also argued his attorney was ineffective.

In his second appeal, Lawrence claimed his indictment was defective and his attorney was ineffective for not challenging it.

The primary reason for the court rejecting his second motion for post-conviction relief rested on the three-year statute of limitations for filing, which Lawrence missed by more than a decade.

Lawrence is currently serving his life sentence in the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility in Pearl.