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Justices Weigh Reinstating Conviction in Two-Year-Old’s Death
(INDIANAPOLIS) Prosecutors are trying to reinstate a teenager’s murder conviction in the death of a two-year-old boy.
Tyre Bradbury didn’t fire a shot, but prosecutors say he acquired the guns for a 2014 gang confrontation in a South Bend park. A stray bullet killed two-year-old John Swoveland Junior as he was playing in his front yard.
A divided Court of Appeals ordered a new trial last year the jury should have been able to consider reckless homicide instead of murder. That would have meant a maximum of 16 years. Instead, Bradbury was sentenced to 90 years, reduced to 60 on a first round of appeals.
In the end, a jury split the difference.
Jurors on Friday afternoon found Doroszko, 20, guilty of involuntary manslaughter in the 2019 shooting death of 19-year-old Traychon Taylor, finding that Doroszko did not commit murder but also rejecting his claim that he was justified in using deadly force to protect himself from a robbery while he was dealing marijuana.
The case is the latest to push the limits of Indianaâs self-defense law, which at face value denies self-defense rights to anyone committing even a low-level or nonviolent crime at the time of a confrontation.
If the jury had convicted Doroszko of murder, he would have faced up to 85 years in prison, based on the maximum 65-year term for murder and a sentencing enhancement of up to 20 years for using a gun to commit a crime.