A Lebanon County judge dismissed Kimberly Maurer’s plea for post-conviction relief, upholding her life sentence plus 10 to 20 years for the brutal abuse and killing of 12-year-old Maxwell Schollenberger in 2020.
Pennsylvania Attorney General Dave Sunday announced the decision on August 26, noting that the Office of Attorney General successfully claimed Maurer obtained fair representation during her 2022 trial and that the verdict was supported by overwhelming evidence.
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Conviction and Sentencing
Maurer and her husband, Scott Schollenberger, were found guilty of subjecting Maxwell to long-term abuse and neglect. Prosecutors described how the pair shut the youngster away, cut him off from the outside world, and subjected him to severe deprivation and maltreatment.
Maurer’s 2022 conviction resulted in a life sentence without parole, plus an extra 10 to 20 years. The boy’s father, Schollenberger, is also serving a life term.
Judge Condemns Attempt to Avoid Accountability
The Post-Conviction Relief Act (PCRA) application was filed after Maurer’s last appeal to the Pennsylvania Superior Court was refused. Lebanon County Common Pleas Judge Bradford Charles, who heard the PCRA motion, delivered a severely worded judgment denying Maurer’s arguments.
Judge Charles deemed the request “offensive,” describing it as Maurer’s “latest attempt to avoid responsibility for her heinous deed.”
Attorney General Sunday praised the ruling, stating: “The acts in this case are so cruel and depraved that they are difficult to believe. Our office argued, and the presiding judge agreed, that this motion for relief was the defendant’s latest attempt to avoid accountability for the deliberate and intentional torture and killing of a pre-teenage child. Our criminal justice system worked just as it should in this case, and the defendant appropriately will spend the rest of her life in a prison cell.”
Details of the Crime
In May 2020, authorities discovered Maxwell’s body inside the family’s Annville Township house. Investigators discovered that the youngster had been locked inside a gloomy room with its windows sealed to block sunlight.
Maxwell weighed only 47 pounds when he died, was very malnourished, and had sustained brain injuries. A forensic pathologist deemed his death a homicide, the result of blunt force head injuries exacerbated by malnutrition and neglect.
Prosecution of the Case
The Office of the Attorney General prosecuted Maurer’s original trial and represented the Commonwealth in the PCRA hearings. Senior Deputy Attorney General Christopher Schmidt argued the most recent motion, successfully defending the trial’s outcome.
With this decision, Maurer’s conviction and sentence stand, ensuring that she will serve the remainder of her life in jail for her role in one of Lebanon County’s most terrible child abuse cases.
