CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — A panel of New Hampshire judges has denied the bid for a shorter prison sentence for a man convicted of trying to kill a Manchester police officer.
In a one-sentence ruling released Wednesday, the judges unanimously upheld the 60-years-to life sentence for 25-year-old Myles Webster. He was convicted of attempted murder after shooting officer Dan Doherty several times following a foot chase in March 2012. Doherty survived.
Webster made his plea for a shorter sentence at a hearing on Aug. 21, arguing it wasn’t fair and that the trial judge would have given him a death sentence if she could.
Webster’s lawyers argued that the sentence should be 25 years, but a prosecutor countered that Webster shot Doherty seven times in an effort to kill him.
“We were disappointed,” said attorney Andrew Winters, one of Webster’s lawyers, said Wednesday.
Winters said he thought their most compelling argument for a reduced sentence was comparing Webster’s sentence to those handed down in second-degree murder convictions, which also carry a 60-year-to-life maximum. Winters said most of those sentences fall in the 25-year range.
Webster offered a mistaken identity defense during his trial. Doherty said it was ludicrous to doubt that he could reliably identify the man who fired seven shots into his body at near point-blank range.
At the Aug. 21 hearing, Doherty called Webster “an evil person.”
“All he wanted to do was cause harm and kill,” Doherty said.
Senior Assistant Attorney General Jeffery Strelzin said he’s pleased with the decision because Webster’s “obviously an extremely dangerous individual and deserves to be in prison for the full term of his sentence.”
Strelzin noted that four of the bullets that didn’t hit Doherty flew into an occupied apartment building. Another, he said, was headed straight for Doherty’s head but was deflected off his raised gun, sending fragments into his hand.
Doherty, after multiple surgeries, returned to active duty in February 2013.
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