< Back to front page Text size – +

Odgren's attorneys ask for verdict to be scaled back

E-mail|Link|Comments () July 26, 2010 01:07 PM

loading video... (please wait a moment)

By Milton J. Valencia, Globe Staff

WOBURN – Prosecutors who won the first-degree murder conviction of John Odgren asked a Middlesex Superior Court judge today to let the decision stand, opposing a defense request to scale the verdict back.

Odgren family is haunted by son’s illness and crime

Assistant Middlesex District Attorney Marguerite Grant cited the Supreme Judicial Court’s position that judges do not “sit as a second jury,” and said the 12 jurors who convicted Odgren did their diligence in delivering the verdict.

"I would likewise suggest your honor doesn't second-guess their wisdom," Grant told Superior Court Judge S. Jane Haggerty.

Lawyers for Odgren have asked Haggerty to reduce the teenager’s first-degree conviction to second-degree, which would change his sentence of life in prison without parole to life with the possibility of parole after 15 years. Under such a change, Odgren, now 19, could be released from prison while in his 30s.

Odgren was convicted of the fatal stabbing of James Alenson in 2007 in a bathroom at Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School. Odgren was 16 at the time, while Alenson was 15. The two boys did not know each other. Odgren had a long history of mental illness. His parents told Northeastern University criminologist James Alan Fox in a story in Sunday's Globe that they were haunted by his incarceration and his mental illness.

Haggerty took the defense request under advisement.