LAS VEGAS (AP) — A man who, as a California high-schooler, raped and killed a 7-year-old girl in a Nevada casino restroom is trying now for a chance at parole.
Attorneys for Jeremy Strohmeyer, 39, asked a state court judge in Las Vegas on Thursday for a new sentencing hearing. They argued that their client deserves reconsideration because he lacked the emotional and intellectual maturity at the time he killed Sherrice Iverson to control his adolescent impulses, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.
Prosecutor Marc DiGiacomo said that if Strohmeyer gets a new sentencing hearing, the state will seek the death penalty.
In May 1997, Strohmeyer was an 18-year-old high school senior in Long Beach, California. During a visit to a resort area near the Nevada-California line, he strangled Sherrice at the Primadonna casino (now Primm Valley Resort).
Strohmeyer was seen on casino security videos following the little girl into a restroom where the murder occurred. Strohmeyer’s DNA also was found on a cigarette butt in the stall where the girl’s body was found.
Strohmeyer avoided death row by pleading guilty. He had confessed to police that he killed and sexually assaulted the girl because he “wanted to experience death,” the state attorney general said in an appeal that the Nevada Supreme Court rejected in 2006.
The state Supreme Court also rejected a 2001 appeal to cancel his guilty plea on grounds that his lawyers at the time pressured him into taking the plea deal.
His current lawyers, Tom Pitaro and Ozzie Fumo, noted Thursday that U.S. Supreme Court rulings in 2012 and 2016 mean that juveniles who received life sentences for killing a single person should have a chance at parole.
Temple University professor Laurence Steinberg, a specialist in adolescent psychological development, testified that 16- and 17-year-olds are more impetuous and impulsive than adults and are more likely to make decisions without thinking about future consequences.
Steinberg told Clark County District Court Judge Douglas Smith that personalities stabilize when people are in their 20s.
The psychologist acknowledged under questioning from DiGiacomo that he did not analyze Strohmeyer, and said he could not gauge Strohmeyer’s level of maturity at age 18, the time of the killing.
The judge did not make an immediate ruling.
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Information from: Las Vegas Review-Journal, http://www.lvrj.com
