IMPD Cop Killer’s Sentence Unchanged After Appeals Court Ruling
INDIANAPOLIS –The man who killed Officer Breann Leath during a 2020 domestic violence call returned to court Friday for re-sentencing.
Elliahs Dorsey, convicted of killing an Indianapolis police officer, faced re-sentencing Friday after the Indiana Court of Appeals found errors in his original sentence. The new ruling did not increase his prison time.
In 2024, Dorsey received a 40-year sentence, including 25 years in prison and 15 years of probation. That sentence included credit for nearly 2,000 days already served. The jury found him guilty of reckless homicide, not murder, even though Leath was shot in the head while responding to a domestic disturbance.
The original sentence by Judge Mark Stoner sparked outrage. Police union president Rick Snyder called it a “miscarriage of justice,” and Mayor Joe Hogsett expressed deep disappointment.
A year later, the appeals court found Stoner had improperly downgraded a criminal confinement charge and ordered a resentencing. Prosecutors asked for 16 more years to be added to Dorsey’s time.
Judge James Snyder agreed to the maximum sentence for the upgraded charge—but then ran it concurrently with the existing sentence. The result: no additional prison time.
In a post on X, Rick Snyder said Judge James Snyder, no relation, refused to make the new sentence consecutive, which would have added more prison time for a convicted cop killer who stood over a slain officer and shot a fleeing domestic violence victim he had held at gunpoint to try to eliminate a witness.
