MASON CITY – A North Iowa judge known for letting crooks off easy showed no mercy for a convicted murderer this week who was looking a quicker ticket out of jail.
Records show that Judge Colleen Weiland denied Damion Seats, age 22, a more lenient sentence in his 2008 first degree murder conviction which landed him in prison for life.
Weiland will not dispute, however, a 2012 ruling by Governor Terry Branstad that commuted the life sentences of Seats and 37 other Iowa prison inmates who committed crimes as juveniles that gave them life sentences. Branstad’s “blanket commutation” changed life sentences to 60-year sentences for 38 juveniles sentenced to life with no chance of parole.
A jury found Seats guilty of murdering 28-year-old Isidoro Erreguin in 2008 with a gun as he was sleeping on a couch at a North End Mason City home. Seats was 17 years-old at the time of the crime.
Seats was on his way back to Fort Madison Penitentiary on Wednesday. Weiland’s ruling could be appealed.