State v. O'DELL

WAHL, Justice.

In 1980 petitioner was tried on an indictment charging him with second degree murder for the January 29, 1980, act of throwing a fellow Stillwater prisoner off the fourth tier of Cell Block B onto the floor nearly 30 feet below. A district court jury acquitted petitioner of the charged offense but found him guilty of the lesser offense of first-degree manslaughter, Minn. Stat. § 609.20(2) (1980). The trial court sentenced petitioner to 15 years in prison, with the sentence running consecutively to a 5-year prison term imposed in 1978 for an assault conviction. The trial court…