Supreme Court refuses to overturn Indiana man’s life sentence – Indianapolis News | Weather Indiana | Indiana traffic

WASHINGTON (WISH) – The U.S. Supreme Court will not hear the case of an Indiana man sentenced to life without parole for the torture and murder of a woman in Greene County.

The Supreme Court announced Monday that it will not hear Jerry Russell’s case.

Russell was convicted of the murder of Pamela Foddrill in August 1995.

Investigators say Russell and two other men kidnapped 44-year-old Foddrill as she walked home from the supermarket.

According to police, the three men kept her locked in the attic storage of a house for more than a week, repeatedly sexually assaulting her.

Investigators also believe the three men eventually beat her with a baseball bat, stabbed her with a knife, wrapped her body in a rug and dumped it in a wooded area in Illinois.

Russell was sentenced twice to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Russell had asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn his sentence, saying he should not be eligible for a life sentence because he suffers from an “intellectual disability.”

The Indiana Supreme Court rejected the same argument in June 2024.

“This issue is a close call because Russell rejects the expert opinion of Dr. Dennis Keyes introduced that Russell is an intellectual, the State concedes that Russell’s intellectual function is impaired, and Russell is on the verge of substantial impairment of his adaptive behavior,” Judge Derek Molter wrote in the court’s 4-1 decision. “And here we must affirm the trial court’s finding that Russell has not met his burden to prove intellectual disability, because that finding is supported by the evidence in the record and is not clearly erroneous.”