Chancey Luna begs for freedom 10 years after murdering Aussie baseball player Chris Lane
A decade after an Aussie baseballer was murdered in a drive-by shooting, his American killer is again pleading to be released. But the prosecutor has a message for the victim’s family.
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Exclusive: A decade after a young Australian was murdered in a senseless drive-by shooting, his American killer has launched yet another bid for freedom while whining to his mother that his accomplices are lying.
But prosecutor Jason Hicks has promised the family of Chris Lane – a promising baseball player who was gunned down while jogging in Duncan, Oklahoma – that the conviction of Chancey Luna is “crystal clear” and the “emotional rollercoaster” will finally soon end.
Lane’s relatives this week marked the 10-year anniversary of his death at the hands of teenagers Luna, Michael Jones and James Edwards, who later told police they were bored when they killed him in a case that stunned Australia and America.
Peter Lane, Chris’s father, said he preferred to focus on the positives – including a baseball field named in his son’s honour which is due to open in Melbourne early next year.
He said he had given the killers “zero thought in almost 10 years” since attending the trial.
“We all make our choices in life. If you make a bad choice, you pay the consequences,” Lane said.
But it can be revealed that Luna, who was 16 at the time of the shooting and was tried as an adult, has mounted a second appeal to water down his life sentence and win a chance at parole.
His case rests on what Hicks said was a “really weird” series of complicated legal rulings on the requirements for sentencing juvenile offenders.
Jennifer Luna, the murderer’s mother, said he kept telling her from jail: “I’m coming home.”
She said he “feels bad” about Lane’s death but wanted a chance at freedom, complaining that “it ain’t go the way” Edwards and Jones testified and that “they’re lying”.
“I said, why didn’t you testify? He said the lawyer didn’t let him … He was just a terrible lawyer,” Luna said.
“If he gets out, I know it’s going to hurt (Lane’s family) real bad and I know it’s going to make them mad. I know that.”
But Hicks dismissed Luna’s claims and said the forthcoming appeal would bring “some finality” for Lane’s family after the “extremely unusual” wrangling linked to the killer’s age.
“He did this and the verdict was proper,” Hicks said.
Lane’s father and his partner Sue travelled to Melbourne this week from their Adelaide home to remember the 22-year-old with his mother Donna, sisters Andrea, Jennifer and Erin, and their partners and children. They gathered at Essendon Baseball Club’s nearly-completed Chris Lane Field in Strathmore Heights.
“(Chris’s sisters) have all got kids now – 10 years on, Donna and I have six grandchildren between us, and I’ve got another three with my partner, Sue,” Lane said.
“(Chris’s sisters will) keep his memory going long after I’m kicking up daisies, they keep the memory alive with their kids.”
He said Sarah Harper – Chris’s American girlfriend of four years at the time he was killed – was also a mum now, having met “a lovely bloke”.
“Their first child just turned one … I’m really happy she’s having the best life she can,” Lane said.
The families remain in touch, with the Lanes planning to invite the Harpers to the opening of the little league field named in Chris’s honour next year, when his father said he would “definitely roll the arm over”.
In Oklahoma, Jones remains behind bars on a life sentence. But Hicks, the District Attorney, expressed his frustration when Edwards was released just five years into his 15-year sentence without his knowledge in 2018.
Asked if the justice system had let down Lane’s family, he said: “Every time you make that phone call to a family, what you’ve done is you’ve just ripped open that same scar, because they’re going to go through the same feelings and the same emotions and everything all over again, like they did when they got the call saying a loved one had been injured or murdered.”
Hicks, who prosecuted the original case, said he often drove past a memorial to Lane in Duncan. He vowed that he would “always be a part of our community”.
“We had a young man here from Australia who was entrusted to our care, and we failed,” Hicks said.
“It’s certainly something that weighs heavily on the hearts of the community and I think it always will.”
Originally published as Chancey Luna begs for freedom 10 years after murdering Aussie baseball player Chris Lane
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