After being sentenced to serve life in prison with no possibility for parole when they pleaded guilty to murdering their parents in 1995, two Lehigh County brothers — David and Bryan Freeman — are expected back in court this week to seek a resentencing.
The chance at a new sentence for the pair comes after a 2012 court ruling found it unconstitutional to sentence someone to life behind bars if they were under the age of 18 at the time the crime was committed.
The Freeman brothers — who were 16 and 17 at the time of the slayings — pleaded guilty to murdering their parents, 54-year-old Dennis Freeman and Brenda Freeman, 48, in their Salisbury Township home in February of 1995.
Prosecutors said Bryan stabbed his mother, Brenda, and David bludgeoned their father.
Their 11-year-old brother, Erik was also fatally beaten.
A third man — Nelson Birdwell III — a cousin of the pair, was also convicted in the murders and was tried as an adult.
However, neither brother was in court on Monday morning after choosing to remain in jail cells instead of being in person when video from the crime scene was played at the Lehigh County Courthouse in Allentown.
According to a former Salisbury police chief, who was in court on Monday, he knows nothing about what the men have done in the last 29 years, but he said the crime scene was more horrific then anything he had ever witnessed — both as a police officer and solider who served in Vietnam.
Officials have said that the brothers were raised as devout Jehovah’s Witnesses but had abandoned their faith and adopted white supremacist skinhead ideology in their youth.
In the past, officials said, the brothers wore military surplus clothes and had face tattoos with the words “Sieg Heil” and “Berserker.”
After the attacks, the brothers and Birdwell fled to Michigan where they were arrested three days later.
Defense attorneys for the pair argued that despite their activity in neo nazi groups as teens, decades in jail has reformed the Feeeman brothers.
This resentencing hearing is expected to last through Friday before a judge will make a decision on any resentencing.
Hayden Mitman, Deanna Durante, Hayden Mitman and Associated Press
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