Supreme Court Ruling Rejects 18-Year-Old Convicted Killer's Appeal For Parole

The Supreme Court has rejected efforts to raise the age limit for life sentences without parole. On Tuesday, a Missouri appeals court overruled an appeal by a convicted cop killer who claimed that his mandatory life sentence was too cruel for his age.

Trenton Forster’s legal claim cited a state law prohibiting life sentences without parole for lawbreakers younger than 18. However, the Missouri Court of Appeals for the Easter District said a recent state Supreme Court ruling allowing sentences without parole for offenders convicted of first-degree murder is applicable to Forster.

Forster shot to death St. Louis County police officer Blake Snyder as the officer approached his vehicle while responding to a disturbance call on Oct. 6, 2016 at 10700 Arno Drive. Police said then-18-year-old Trenton Forster was suicidal, angry, and high on drugs at the time. In 2019, Forster was sentenced after being found guilty of killing Snyder and attempting to kill his partner, officer John Becker.

Following his sentencing, Forster’s lawyers conceded that he had killed Snyder. However, they presented a “diminished capacity” defense, stating that their client was not capable of committing premeditated murder because of his long history of mental illness.

For her part, Elizabeth Snyder said she had already forgiven Forster but stressed that forgiveness does not mean she would forget his actions. “I wanted him to always remember what he did, always remember Blake’s face, and always remember the future he yanked away from us,” she said. “God says we have to forgive in order to live a happy life, so I have chosen to forgive him. It was very difficult. It does not mean it was easy, but it was the right thing to do.”

Meanwhile, Trenton Forster also claimed that some of the pieces of evidence that entered at trial were prejudicial, including the trial testimony of Snyder’s wife Elizabeth Snyder, an image of her husband in his police uniform, and anti-police rhetoric in audio recordings from one of his phone calls in jail.