A Lowndes County man sentenced to life in prison for a 1980 murder now has the possibility of parole.
Mack Arthur King was re-sentenced to life imprisonment Monday in Lowndes County Circuit County by Judge Lee Coleman. King had been serving life without parole until the Mississippi Supreme Court interceded in June.
A jury convicted King in December 1981 for beating, strangling and drowning Lelia Patterson as he robbed her Lowndes County home. The jury sentenced King to death, and two subsequent Lowndes County juries upheld King’s sentence, according to District Attorney Forrest Allgood.
In 2013, the U.S. District Court for Northern Mississippi vacated King’s death sentence, ruling he was “intellectually disabled and therefore ineligible for execution.” The federal court remanded the case to Lowndes County for re-sentencing.
The Mississippi Supreme Court’s June 18 decision overruled the new sentence of life without parole because, at the time of King’s 1981 conviction, death and life with parole were the only sentencing options.
Monday’s ruling by Judge Coleman brought Lowndes County justice in line with the state’s highest court.
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