GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — A woman given 25-50 years in prison for killing her landlord in western Michigan and burning the body has lost a bid to get her conviction and sentence overturned.
A Kent County jury convicted Robin Root of second-degree murder in the death of 60-year-old Janna Kelly.
It was Root’s second trial for the same offense. Her 2015 conviction for first-degree murder was overturned and a new trial ordered because Root wasn’t read her Miranda rights.
Jurors in the second trial found Root guilty of second-degree murder.
Authorities say Root strangled Kelly during a December 2007 argument; she owed Kelly $2,900 in back rent.
Kelly, co-owner of an insurance agency, was killed in Grand Rapids and some of her belongings left at a nearby car wash. Her charred remains were found several months later in a field in Ottawa County’s Grand Haven Township.
The high-profile case went unsolved for several years until investigators in 2015 linked Root to the crime through DNA evidence.
At her first trial, Root was found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced in December of 2015 to mandatory life in prison.
But that conviction was overturned by the Michigan Court of Appeals after justices said some of the trial evidence should have been off limits.
Portions of a police interview occurred before Root was informed of her Miranda rights, “thus depriving her of her Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination,’’ justices wrote in a 19-page decision.
That set the stage for a new trial, which took place in 2018. Root was found guilty of second-degree murder and sent back to prison.
Root challenged both her conviction and sentence. The appeals court, in a nine-page ruling, recently upheld both.
Root, now 57, is at the Women’s Huron Valley Correctional Facility in Washtenaw County. She is not eligible for release until April of 2040.
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