LIMESTONE COUNTY, Ala. — UPDATE 12/1/23: A Limestone County judge on Friday dismissed a motion to retry Mason Sisk, the man who, at the age of 14, killed several members of his immediate family, including an infant.
The two-paragraph document offered no further explanations or details.
The state's motion objecting to the plea for a new trial, dated Oct. 19, offered that the court had previously ruled on all arguments raised by attorneys in plea and agreed with those rulings. "The Defendant does not cite any case, rule of evidence, or constitutional provision, and does not advance any new argument, as to why the Court should reverse its previous rulings," attorneys for the prosecution had written.
10/11/2023: Attorneys for Mason Sisk have asked for a new trial. Reasons for the request for a new trial include how his statements were obtained and used, how expert testimony was handled, and what testimony about Sisk's family was allowed.
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Mason Sisk, the teenager convicted of killing five family members, was sentenced to life in prison Thursday, without possibility of parole. Circuit Judge Chadwick Wise wrote that the crime was “ghastly, disturbing, and draped in unmitigated evil" and warranted the harshest punishment allowed by law.
A jury in April convicted Sisk of multiple counts of capital murder for the 2019 shooting deaths of his father, stepmother and younger siblings. All five were shot in the head at their home in Elkmont. The youngest was an infant.
John Wayne Sisk, 38, and Mary Sisk, 35, were found dead in their home on Sept. 2, 2019, along with their three children — 6-year-old Kane, 4-year-old Aurora and 6-month-old Colson. All had been shot in the head.
Sisk initially told police he was in the basement playing video games when he heard gunshots and ran outside to see a vehicle pulling away, but he later told investigators he’d killed the five, prosecutors said.
“Yeah, they argue a lot, and I got fed up with it,” Sisk said in a video recording of the questioning. “And the kids were going through a lot.”
Two options were available to the judge: life without the possibility of parole or life with the possibility of parole after first serving 30 years. The death penalty was not an option due to Sisk's age at the time of the crime.
The U.S. Supreme Court said life sentences for those under the age of 18 at the time of their crimes are inappropriate except for the rarest of cases and judges should consider “children’s diminished culpability, and heightened capacity for change."
Wise wrote that the slayings were the rare case where a life sentence without parole was warranted for a juvenile defendant. He noted the victims had been killed as they were lying in bed. He wrote that the “circumstances of the Sisk case are much more appalling” than other cases where life sentences have been upheld for juvenile defendants.
The first attempt to prosecute Sisk ended in a mistrial in September of 2022 after new evidence from Mary Sisk's cellphone became available.