A man ordered to spend the rest of his life in prison without parole for a murder he committed as a teenager has been given a new sentence.<\/p>\n
It was standing-room only inside a Berks County courtroom on Thursday, as a Berks County judge re-sentenced Melvin Ortiz to 35 years to life in state prison, with credit for the 20-and-a-half years he’s already served.<\/p>\n
That’s the sentence recommended by Berks County District Attorney John Adams.<\/p>\n
Ortiz was convicted in 1999 of second-degree murder for the fatal shooting of George Clauser Jr. during a robbery of Clauser’s pizza shop on North 10th Street in Reading two days before Christmas in 1997.<\/p>\n
Ortiz was 17 at the time of the killing, making him eligible for re-sentencing as a result of a Supreme Court decision that applied retroactively a ban on mandatory life sentences for juvenile offenders.<\/p>\n
“I think we’re pretty much satisfied the way it went,” said George Clauser, Sr. “I still think the Supreme Court made a stupid ruling.”<\/p>\n
The second person involved in the murder has not been identified, and Clauser’s family said Ortiz should never be released from prison unless he names his accomplice.<\/p>\n
“Absolutely not,” said Clauser Sr. “I could say, yeah, if he will name the other guy and make sure he’s convicted.”<\/p>\n
Ortiz and his family have maintained his innocence from day one. Ortiz’s brother, Javier, said the family is disappointed that he didn’t become a free man on Thursday, but they’re thankful for, at least, the possibility of a second chance.<\/p>\n
“We want the truth to come out,” said Javier Ortiz. “We’ve been trying to tell the truth for 20-something years, but they don’t want to hear his voice. They don’t want to accept his appeal. They don’t want to bring light to this darkness.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A man ordered to spend the rest of his life in prison without parole for a murder he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":212455,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[279,31,10465,139,128,130,129],"class_list":["post-212454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-berks","tag-crime","tag-dni","tag-news","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=212454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212454\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/212455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}