Judge H. Chris Ryan doesn’t have any leeway when he sentences 38-year old Donald Fredres for murder. The law says Fredres must get a life sentence at a hearing scheduled for July 1st. The only other outcome could be throwing out the guilty verdicts and ordering a new trial—if Public Defender Ryan Hamer can convince him to.
A jury today found Fredres guilty of killing 62-year olds Brenda and Greg Barnes in their home northeast of Sheridan. State’s Attorney Todd Martin says Fredres shot them when they wouldn’t tell him where their daughter, Fredres’s ex-wife, lived. Fredres found out her address anyway and went there. He was also convicted of attempted murder for all the bullets he fired into his ex-wife’s home.
A previous court case and a note read in court this week indicate Fredres had much trouble since he and his former wife divorced in 2012. For two years, Fredres wasn’t allowed to be anywhere in the village of Sheridan. He signed an agreement to that after she accused him of spreading nails around her home and watching the home. The agreement had expired by the time of the crimes against the Barneses and their daughter in March last year. In a letter signed “Donald Fredres, Jr.”, his family, landlord, boss, and others are accused of turning against him.
Although the judge can’t vary from the life sentence, the law requires a sentencing hearing. Martin says it’ll give people on each side of the case the chance to air their feelings.
In closing arguments, Fredres’s lawyer said several inconclusive results from evidence analyses and other shortcomings show the prosecutors failed to prove the case. In testimony this week, a DNA expert couldn’t determine when Fredres left his DNA on the gun used in the crime. A gunshot residue tester said residue on Fredres’s left hand could have been from mere contact with a scene where a gun had been fired. Seven of the bullets were deformed too badly for an analyst to be sure they came from the gun. And the investigator who examined Fredres’s cell phone couldn’t be sure no one besides Fredres used it to find his ex-wife’s address.
Hamer said all his client wanted to do on the night of March 16, 2021 was see his children. His ex-wife has custody of their sons. As for why Fredres describes shooting the Barneses in a police interview video, Hamer said he can’t explain. He raised the question of why one of Greg Barnes’s sons was allowed to take two revolvers from the home after the murders and whether other potential evidence was removed. Testimony this week was that the guns belonged to the son and weren’t used in the crime.
In just two hours, jurors concluded the evidence is strong enough to sign guilty verdicts. Deliberations began at about 11:30am. Some of the jurors took box lunches with them as they left about 1:40pm. During deliberations, they asked to hear a 911 call again. They also asked how many bullets were fired into Fredres’s ex-wife’s home. Judge Ryan let them hear the 911 call but told them they would have to rely on the evidence already presented for information about the shots fired.