NJ Killer loses another try for shorter sentenfe

PRESS RELEASE
October 28, 2011
For Immediate Release
Contact: Bernie Weisenfeld- PIO

In another attempt to overturn rulings that affirmed his 25-year aggravated manslaughter sentence, resulting from the 1998 fatal shooting of a man at a Logan Township NJ Holiday Inn, Kyle Ransome (DOB 4/24/78), of Penns Grove NJ was again rejected today by an appellate court .

Ransome, who this time wrote his own 35-page legal brief, saying his last appeal lawyer was ineffective, argued that the sentencing judge in June 2001 mistakenly imposed an excessive prison term for his conviction in the shooting of 23-year-old Richard Nichols, of Salem NJ during a birthday party brawl at the Logan hotel. The sentence should have been 20 years, Ransome maintained.

The sentence has twice been affirmed on appeals, said Assistant Gloucester County Prosecutor Joseph Enos in an answering brief. “He has attacked it as being excessive and now attacks it as unsound. He cannot attack it as being illegal,” Enos wrote. Ransome claimed his sentence was unjust based on “only one solitary contact with the court” before the shooting. But that was a guilty plea to selling drugs in a school zone, for which he received probation, then he violated probation by getting a gun and killing Nichols, Enos repeatedly stated in his brief.

The appeals court, calling Ransome’s submission “a stealth second application for post-conviction relief,” said the convicted killer didn’t submit the required lower-court order from which he was appealing. “We decline to address Ransome’s claims in the face of his blatant disregard for our rules of procedure,” it said.