MASON CITY, Iowa - A Mason City man convicted of murder at age 17 is having a post-conviction relief non-jury trial Wednesday in Cerro Gordo County in an attempt to get his conviction reversed.
Damion Seats was convicted of first-degree murder and first-degree burglary in the shooting death of Isidoro Erreguin. Erreguin was killed Aug. 24, 2008, at 1504 N. Adams Ave.
Seats “respectfully requests that his conviction for murder in the first degree and burglary be reversed and the case remanded for a new trial date due to the state’s multiple instances of misconduct that deprived him of his right to a fair trial in addition to his trial counsel’s ineffectiveness in not objecting to the objectionable conduct,” court documents filed in April state.
The document claims that one witness in the case lied about seeing a gun in Seats’ lap.
Seats was originally sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, but some Iowans who received the sentence as juveniles have become eligible for parole.
In 2017, Seats was denied parole. In 2009, Seats was found guilty of murder by a Hardin County jury in less than two hours.
