MUNCIE, IN — The Indiana Court of Appeals has upheld a Muncie man’s murder conviction and 70-year prison sentence.
A Delaware Circuit Court 1 jury in July 2024 found Malek S. Williams guilty in the shooting death on Aug. 22, 2022, of 19-year-old Que’Aundre Johnson of Marion.
Williams, now 25, later received the 70-year sentence from Judge Judi Calhoun. She imposed a 55-year sentence for Williams’ murder conviction and added 15 years as a penalty for using a firearm in committing the crime.
The early morning slaying, which was captured on surveillance video, took place in the Village business district east of the Ball State University campus.
Trial testimony indicated Williams fired a handgun 13 times as he chased Johnson from outside Brothers Bar & Grill to a nearby Marathon convenience store, where the victim collapsed.
The young Marion man was hit from behind by seven bullets, some striking his lungs and heart.
In a 3-0 decision released on Tuesday, March 17, the appeals court rejected each of several arguments raised by Williams.
The Muncie man contended prosecutors had “failed to disprove his claim of self-defense” and called his sentence “inappropriately harsh.”
Prosecutors “produced sufficient evidence to rebut Williams’s claims that he did not provoke, instigate, or participate willingly in the violence and had a reasonable fear of death or great bodily harm,” Judge Cale Bradford wrote in the decision.
Bradford also wrote that Williams’s response to “a simple property dispute was to kill, which does not speak well of his character.”
Incarcerated at the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City, Williams has a projected release date in February 2075, according to state Department of Correction records.
Douglas Walker is a news reporter at The Star Press. Contact him at 765-213-5851 or at dwalker@muncie.gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on Muncie Star Press: Appeals court upholds Muncie man’s murder conviction, 70-year sentence
Reporting by Douglas Walker, Muncie Star Press / Muncie Star Press
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