A 15-year-old boy from Anderson, Indiana was sentenced to 100 years in prison on Wednesday for the shooting death of 26-year-old Dayla Swain outside a nightclub last year. Jo’Majze Larry will serve the term at the Indiana Department of Correction. He was a minor at the time of the shooting and remains one now.
Madison County Circuit Court Judge David Happe handed down the sentence in two pieces. Larry got 50 years for the murder itself and another 50 years attached to a criminal organization enhancement, which is an add on prosecutors can seek when they argue a crime was committed as part of organized gang activity. An enhancement is not a separate crime. It is extra time layered onto a conviction the defendant already has, and in this case it doubled a 50 year sentence into a century.
A jury convicted Larry on June 30 on five counts: murder, attempted murder as a level 1 felony, conspiracy to commit murder as a level 2 felony, criminal organization activity as a level 5 felony, and dangerous possession of a firearm as a misdemeanor. Indiana ranks its felonies from level 1 as the most serious down to level 6, with murder sitting in its own category above all of them. After the verdict came back, Larry admitted to the criminal organization enhancement, which is what opened the door to the second 50 years.
The shooting happened on February 2, 2025 outside Sonny Ray’s, a nightclub in Anderson, a city about an hour from Indianapolis. Officers found Swain wounded in the street and a second woman wounded in front of a nearby house. Both were taken to the hospital, and Swain later died at a facility in Indianapolis. A third woman checked herself into a hospital after she was struck by a vehicle fleeing the scene.
Dayla Swain was not who the shooters were looking for. According to prosecutors, the gunfire that night was a failed attempt to kill a witness to a different homicide, the 2023 killing of 15-year-old Jullian Craig during an attempted armed robbery. Prosecutors alleged that Craig’s death led Larry, his co-defendant and other members of the Mickey Cobra Nation to conspire to kill the person who had seen it happen. Donavan Harris, 20, also of Anderson, was convicted in June in Craig’s murder. Larry was one of four members of that group charged in Swain’s death.
His co-defendant, 19-year-old Rashawn Samuels, was tried alongside him and convicted by the same jury on the same day. Judge Happe sentenced Samuels on Thursday to 125 years, structured the same way, with 62 and a half years for the murder and 62 and a half more for the enhancement.
There is one provision in Indiana law that separates Larry’s case from his co-defendant’s. Because he was under 18 when the murder occurred, he is allowed to ask the sentencing court to review and possibly modify his sentence after he has served at least 20 years, and he can do it without needing the prosecuting attorney to agree. For most defendants, a prosecutor can block that kind of request outright.
The Madison County Prosecutor’s Office moved quickly to explain what that provision does and does not mean. In a statement issued after the sentencing, the office said the statute does not automatically reduce or shorten the sentence and does not guarantee release after 20 years. It said the law simply permits the defendant to ask the court to consider a modification, that the prosecutor’s office will have the opportunity to oppose any such request, and that Swain’s family will have the right to be notified and heard at any hearing.
In practical terms, Larry would be in his mid thirties at the earliest point he could ask, and a judge who has already heard this case would decide whether anything changes. Nothing about the 100 years is provisional in the meantime.
