Michigan judge shortens prison term for man who killed mom, sisters as teen

A western Michigan man serving a life sentence for killing his mother and two sisters when he was a teenager will get a shorter prison term and an opportunity for freedom, a judge said Tuesday.

Kent County Judge Mark Trusock said he will sentence Jon Siesling to a term of years June 8. The judge could have stayed with a life sentence.

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Siesling was 17 in 2003 when he bludgeoned and stabbed his mother and also killed his sisters, ages 6 and 15, at their Walker home, near Grand Rapids.

He was convicted of first-degree murder and automatically given a life sentence with no chance for parole. Decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court and Michigan Supreme Court have given so-called juvenile lifers an opportunity to win release.

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Siesling's new minimum sentence would be somewhere from 25 years to 40 years, which would then qualify him for review by the state parole board. He will get credit for 20 years already served.

"He’s changed," Tina Olson, attorney for Siesling, told the judge last week. "His remorse, his horror for what he did to his family is real and enduring."

In 2003, Siesling's trial lawyers said he suffered from depression and dissociative identity disorder, formerly known as multiple personality disorder.