Dahmer originally plead guilty to all 15 murders that the prosecutes had proof of but he then against his legal council advice changed his plea to guilty due to insanity. On February 15, 1992 the court reconvened to hear the verdict: Dahmer was ruled
to be sane and not suffering from a mental disorder at the time of each
of the 15 murders for which he was tried of he was convicted.After just 5 hours of deliberation the jury convicted Dahmer on all counts of murder. On the first two counts Dahmer was sentenced to life imprisonment plus ten years,with the remaining 13 counts carrying a mandatory
sentence of life imprisonment plus 70 years. The death penalty was not
an option for the Judge to consider at the penalty phase as the State
of Wisconsin had abolished capital punishment in 1853.
Death in Prison
Dahmer reportedly adjusted well to prison life although he was initially kept apart from the general population. He eventually convinced authorities to allow him to integrate fully with the general population. He was said to have found religion in the form of books and photos sent to him by his father, and he was granted permission by the Columbia Correctional Institution to be baptized by a local preacher.
On November 28, 1994, in accordance with his inclusion in regular work details, he was assigned to work with two other prisoners, Jesse Anderson, a white supremacist and convicted murderer, and Christopher Scarver, an African American prisoner who was a diagnosed schizophrenic serving a life sentence for murder. Twenty minutes after they had been left alone to complete their tasks, guards returned to find that Scarver had crushed Dahmer's skull and fatally beaten Anderson with a metal bar from the prison weight room.