01 March 2010 :

Judge Sheila A. Carlisle ruled that Chijioke Bomani Ben-Yisrayl, who once sat on Death Row for the 1984 rape and killing of a woman, was sentenced to 60 years on prison for murder today in Marion Superior Court. The new sentence goes on top of an earlier sentence to 90 years for his other charges: rape, burglary and criminal confinement, an effective life sentence. The new hearing came after years of appeals and developments that included the reversal of his capital sentence (see June 27, 2003), inadvertently destroyed evidence, and then prosecutors' resulting dismissal of the death penalty request two years ago. Ben-Yisrayl, 48, named Greagree Davis at the time, was sentenced to death in 1984 for raping and killing Debra Weaver, 21. He had hoped that DNA testing on a destroyed rape kit would exonerate him. The new murder sentence was ordered by the Indiana Court of Appeals last July. The reason stretched back to Ben-Yisrael's 1984 trial, in which the jury deadlocked on the death penalty. Then-Judge Roy F. Jones issued a death sentence -- along with a backup sentence of 60 years for the murder charge, just in case the capital sentence was later overturned. The Court of Appeals ruled last year that the alternative sentence was illegal. But the new sentence today achieves the same result, with Ben-Yisrayl's total sentences running 150 years.