The Supreme Court of Kentucky has made a ruling in an appeal filed by Joshua Cotton, who was found guilty by a jury in the 2022 death of Alijah Watts—and they have chosen to uphold the conviction, but remand the sentencing.
Cotton and his defense made the appeal to have his conviction for murder overturned due what he calls six errors made by the Commonwealth during trial. In the appeal, Cotton felt the admission of the victim’s identification of Cotton as the shooter was improper, that there was improper testimony made by a law enforcement witness, that the admission of gruesome autopsy photos was improper, what he calls prosecutorial misconduct, failure to consider probation at sentencing, therefore violating youthful offender statutes and cumulative error.
The Supreme Court reviewed all instances of Cotton’s complaints, and while they did find some errors in opening statements made by the Commonwealth during trial and references made to Cotton’s enacting of his Miranda rights, they ultimately ruled that those errors were not nearly severe enough to warrant a reversal in his conviction.
However, the Supreme Court did find that the trial court failed to adequately consider probation in this case, which is pursuant to Cotton being a youthful offender. The court documents were marked to indicate that Cotton was ‘not eligible for probation’, but failed to state for the record the reason for that finding.
So, the Supreme Court ruled to vacate the judgement against Cotton and have remanded it back to Christian Circuit Court to be resentenced—that’s to give the trial court the opportunity to consider probating Cotton’s sentence.
Cotton is currently serving a 45-year sentence that was recommended by the jury and set down by the judge. He will now need to reappear in court for a new sentencing.