U.S. Supreme Court denies review for man who used machete to kill his parents

CEDAR RAPIDS - The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday ruled it won't review the conviction and sentence of a Tama man who killed his parents with a homemade machete in their home on the Meskwaki Settlement in 2014.

Gordon Lasley Jr., 28, was convicted by a federal jury on two counts of second-degree murder within Indian Country and sentenced to two consecutive life sentences in prison in March 2015. He originally was charged with two counts of first-degree murder for killing his parents, Gordon Sr. and Kim Lasley, on Feb. 5, 2014, at their home on the settlement.

This was Lasley's final appeal. The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Lasley's U.S. District conviction and sentencing in August, and later denied a rehearing by the full appeals court.

Eighth Circuit Judge Myron Bright of Fargo, N.D., however, wrote a dissenting opinion of the ruling by the three-judge panel, arguing the sentencing illustrates how Native Americans are more harshly treated in federal courts than state or tribal courts.

'I write to protest the sentencing disparity in this case and the heavy disparity in sentences for other similarly-situated individuals based purely on their race and residence,” Bright argued in his dissent.

Bright, who has objected in the past about sentencing disparities in the prosecution of 'Indian Country” cases, said if Lasley was convicted in state court he would have received 50 years in prison and been eligible for parole after 35 years. Bright pointed out there were no documented state court cases, at the time, where a person convicted of two counts of second-degree murder had been sentenced to consecutive 50-year terms.

Bright also took issue with U.S. District Chief Judge Linda Reade applying the federal sentencing guidelines for first-degree murder in determining Lasley's two life terms because he was convicted of two counts of second-degree murder.

The difference between the charges is premeditation which is required for first-degree murder, but prosecutors argued at trial and during sentencing that Lasley had intention and premeditation when he raised the 3-foot-long homemade machete and stabbed his father in the skull, behind his left ear, and down into the spinal cord until he was dead.

Former Assistant U.S. Attorney C.J. Williams said during trial that Lasley then chased his mother as she tried to escape from him, eventually striking her six to seven times with the machete, with the fatal wound coming with the severing of her carotid artery.

Williams demonstrated the brutal attack with a wooden replica of the machete for the jurors and told them the photos, which they only saw a fraction of during the trial, reveal the 'unspeakable horror” of that night.

Reade, during sentencing, said the guidelines don't account for his killing of two people or for the 'brutal” manner of death.

'These were savage attacks,” Reade said. 'Kim had to watch the attack on her husband and then flee for her own life.”

Reade also pointed out that the killings had a witness - the young daughter of Lasley Jr. - and according to testimony, he planned to kill the child and himself afterward.

Lasley claimed insanity and didn't testify during the trial. Two psychologists testifying for the defense said Lasley had paranoid schizophrenia and delusional disorder. Lasley told them he falsely believed his parents infected him with AIDS or another sexually transmitted disease and 'bad medicine” or a 'hex” was put upon him and the only way to heal himself was to kill them.

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