Oklahoma court vacates teen killer’s life sentence
DUNCAN, Okla. – An Oklahoma teenager convicted in the random murder of a college baseball player from Australia in 2013 had his life sentence without parole vacated Friday by the state Court of Criminal Appeals.
The appeals court ordered the trial court to resentence Chancey Allen Luna of Duncan to a lesser punishment behind bars, citing the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last January barring life sentences without parole for crimes, including murder, committed before age 18.
The appeals court upheld his first-degree murder conviction.
Luna was 16 when he was accused of the drive-by shooting murder of Christopher Lane, 22, who was jogging on a roadway in this town of 23,000 about 80 miles southwest of Oklahoma City.
Lane, from Melbourne, Australia, was in Duncan visiting his girlfriend’s family, and preparing for his senior year at Central University in Ada, Oklahoma, a school he attended on a baseball scholarship.
Three other teenagers were with Luna in a car when authorities said he fired a single .22-caliber bullet in August, 2013, from the back seat that struck Lane running alongside the road. The other teens were sentenced to lesser prison terms as accessories to murder.
One of the teens who cooperated with police investigators said the motive for the shooting was boredom. Luna’s defense attorney said at his trial that he only meant to scare Lane and not to kill him.
The U.S. Supreme Court decision prohibiting life sentences without parole for crimes committed by juveniles has resulted in the resentencing of several young killers locked away for life in states across the country.