Convicted Murderer To Be Paroled?

Des Moines, Iowa — An Alton man who was serving a life sentence without parole for a 1976 murder is now eligible for parole.

In August of last year, the Iowa Court of Appeals denied the appeal of 57-year-old John Walter Mulder.

In 1979 a jury convicted Mulder of First Degree Murder in the shooting death of 55-year old Jean Homan in her Alton bedroom in April 1976. Immediately before firing at Homan, Mulder had aimed his rifle at her husband, Carl, but the rifle misfired. Following his conviction, Homan received a mandatory life sentence. He was 14 years old at the time of the murder.

A 2015 Supreme Court decision allowed Mulder to be resentenced since it was determined by the court that a mandatory life sentence for a juvenile amounted to cruel and unusual punishment. Following that ruling, Iowa Governor Terry Branstad commuted Mulder’s sentence to life with the possibility of parole after 60 years.

The Iowa Supreme Court ruled that Branstad’s blanket commutation was not right because each case required an individualized sentencing hearing. As a result, Mulder was resentenced in Sioux County in May 2016, to a term of life with the possibility of parole after 42-years. Mulder appealed that sentence, asserting that the 42-year minimum amounted to a life sentence.

The Iowa Court of Appeals denied his appeal in a decision issued in August 2017 and affirmed Mulder’s sentence of Life with the possibility of parole after 42 years. Mulder appealed to the Iowa Supreme Court.

The Iowa Supreme Court said that they didn’t have to rule on whether that sentence amounted to life without parole, but they did rule that the resentencing failed to meet the standards set in a similar case. They vacated the decision of the court of appeals, reversed the decision of the district court, and remanded the case for resentencing.

Those standards they referred to said that the Iowa Constitution does not “categorically prohibit the imposition of a minimum term of incarceration without the possibility of parole on a juvenile offender, provided the court only imposes it after a complete and careful consideration of the relevant mitigating factors of youth.” The opinion of the Supreme Court was that the consideration of these factors was not up to the standard.

In a telephone hearing on Thursday, District Judge Steven Andreasen resentenced Mulder to a life sentence with no mandatory number of years before he is eligible for parole. As a result, Mulder was immediately eligible for parole. But it is now up to the Iowa Parole Board as to if Mulder is ever released from custody.

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