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Last updated on Monday, May 1, 2017
(BROWN CO.) - The attorney for convicted murder Daniel Messel has filed an appeal claiming evidence used in the case should not have been allowed during the trial because it made the sentencing unfair and excessive.
In August 2016, Messel was sentenced by Brown County Circuit Court Judge Judith Steward to 60 years for the murder of Indiana University student Hannah Wilson plus another 20 years for being a habitual offender.
Court documents filed last week by attorney Kurt Young say the 80-year sentenced handed down was unfair and excessive. The attorney says that Judge Steward failed to take into consideration mitigating factors.
He also claims that testimony that Messel owned a Maglight - saying that could have been the murder weapon used to bludgeon Wilson - should not have been allowed when no murder weapon or the flashlight was ever found.
The coroner testified that a hard blunt object, such as a flashlight or a heavy tree limb or baseball bat, could have been the weapon used to strike Wilson multiple times in the head, causing her death. Officials say that Wilson was abducted during the chaos of Little 500 weekend in April 2015. Police found her body in a vacant lot in Brown County about 30 minutes away from the Bloomington campus.
Messel, 52, was sent to Michigan City prison to serve his sentence, but in November he was transferred to the New Castle Correctional Facility psychiatric unit.
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