JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 The man convicted of killing an 8-year-old Jacksonville girl over 25 years ago was back in court again Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Action News Jax has been following the murder of Maddie Clifton since it happened in 1998. <\/p>\n
>>> STREAM ACTION NEWS JAX LIVE <\/b><\/a><\/p>\n Joshua Phillips, now 41, and his defense team appeared in front of a judge Tuesday morning to give a status update on whether they are ready to set a date for a sentencing review hearing. They\u2019re looking to reduce his sentence of life in prison.<\/p>\n The hearing lasted under four minutes. <\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve spoken with the state. We received a bunch of the discovery, I believe it\u2019s the entirety of the information that we were entitled to. We\u2019re going through the review process of that,\u201d Joshua Beard, Defense Attorney for Phillips, said. <\/p>\n RELATED: <\/b>Killer of Jacksonville girl nearly three decades ago returned to Duval County court<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n Beard quickly let the judge know he\u2019s still working on some other things that may take some time. <\/p>\n \u201cThere are some outstanding things that we are working on that I hope to be able to complete by the end of the year,\u201d Beard said. <\/p>\n Phillips and Maddie were neighbors in the Lakewood area, and her body was found under his waterbed. Phillips was 14 years old at the time of Clifton\u2019s death.<\/p>\n [DOWNLOAD: <\/b>Free Action News Jax app for alerts as news breaks<\/b><\/a>]<\/b><\/p>\n In 2017, he was resentenced to life in prison for the second time after a 2012 U.S. Supreme Court ruling barred mandatory sentences of life without parole for juveniles found guilty of murder. <\/p>\n Earlier this year, a judge approved a sentencing review hearing for Phillips to move forward. <\/p>\n Back in June, we told <\/b>you <\/b>when Phillips\u2019 attorney asked for more time before reviewing his sentence. <\/p>\n [SIGN UP: <\/b>Action News Jax Daily Headlines Newsletter<\/b><\/a>] <\/b><\/p>\n At the time, we spoke with local Defense Attorney Chris Carson, who is not affiliated with this case. He said he doesn\u2019t expect Phillips\u2019 life sentence to change because of the nature of the murder and the national attention it\u2019s received.<\/p>\n \u201cI think the practical reality is it would take some very compelling evidence for a judge to modify the sentence at this point,\u201d Carson said. <\/p>\n Phillips will be back in court for that status hearing on Tuesday, December 16.<\/p>\n Click here<\/b><\/a> to download the free Action News Jax news and weather apps, <\/b>click here<\/b><\/a> to download the Action News Jax Now app for your smart TV and <\/b>click here<\/b><\/a> to stream Action News Jax live.<\/b><\/p>\n Action News Jax Top Stories<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 The man convicted of killing an 8-year-old Jacksonville girl over 25 years ago was back…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":321921,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5136],"tags":[12189,13030,161049,5229,161045,54760,78633,12187,3188,723,29918,11561,7310,161043,161047,161046,50606,425,29917,161044,83687,31689,67,586,132,5230,68,161048,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-321920","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jacksonville","8":"tag-action_news","9":"tag-action_news_jacks","10":"tag-addison_poglio","11":"tag-america","12":"tag-chandler_phil","13":"tag-chris_carson","14":"tag-clifton","15":"tag-duval_county","16":"tag-fl","17":"tag-florida","18":"tag-foglio","19":"tag-jack","20":"tag-jacksonville","21":"tag-josh_phillips","22":"tag-joshua_beard","23":"tag-joshua_phillips","24":"tag-lakewood","25":"tag-local","26":"tag-madison","27":"tag-mattie_clifton","28":"tag-phillips","29":"tag-un","30":"tag-united-states","31":"tag-united-states-of-america","32":"tag-unitedstates","33":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","34":"tag-us","35":"tag-us_supreme_court","36":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115413811903597365","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=321920"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321920\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/321921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=321920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=321920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=321920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}