CROWN POINT, Ind. (AP) - A man who was sentenced to life in prison without parole for fatally shooting a northwestern Indiana police officer is asking a court to review his conviction.
Twenty-nine-year-old Carl Le’Ellis Blount has filed a petition alleging Lake County prosecutors threatened him to get him to plead guilty to murder in the 2014 shooting death of Gary Patrolman Jeffrey Westerfield. He says prosecutor threatened to file murder charges against him in two other cases and to seek the death penalty in both cases.
He pleaded guilty last year in return for prosecutors not charging him in connection with a double slaying in Gary, also in 2014.
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The Lake County prosecutor’s office has denied Blount’s allegations. A hearing on the petition has been scheduled for Dec. 5.
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