Shawnee Man To Serve 90 Months In Prison For Abuse Of Four-Year-Old Child In Indian Country

Oklahoma City, Oklahoma – Justin L. Ellis, 26, of Shawnee, Oklahoma, and a tribal member of the Kickapoo Tribe, was sentenced yesterday by U.S. District Court Judge Stephen Friot to serve 90 months in federal prison for malicious injury of a four-year old child on the federal lands held in trust for the Kickapoo Tribe of Oklahoma, announced Sanford C. Coats, United States Attorney for the Western District of Oklahoma.

According to court records, on November 10, 2012, Ellis, a tribal member of the Kickapoo Tribe, repeatedly burned a four-year-old child on the buttocks and legs with a lit cigarette on Kickapoo Tribal land in in Pottawatomie County. Ellis pled guilty on June 3, 2013. At sentencing, the court went above the sentencing guidelines of up to 51 months in prison to fashion a 90-month sentence appropriate to the crime. Upon release from prison, Ellis will be supervised by the U.S. Probation office for an additional three years.

This case is the result of an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Don Gifford, II.