Michelle Hetzel may have been a teenager when she killed her lover in 2000 in Easton, but she was no child, according to a Northampton County Court ruling this week.
Judge Edward Smith said he plans to dismiss a new appeal by Hetzel, who argued that she falls under a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in June that it is cruel and unusual punishment to sentence a juvenile to a mandatory term of life in prison without parole for murder.
Hetzel was 18 — an adult under the law — when she and her husband lured 19-year-old Devon Guzman of Forks Township to their south Easton home and slashed her throat. Hetzel and her now ex-husband, Brandon Bloss, were convicted of first-degree murder at trial and are serving life sentences.
