Supreme Court rejects Gillette murder appeal

GILLETTE — A Gillette man’s appeal of his murder conviction has failed.

In September 2017, Joseph Nielsen was convicted of abusing and killing his girlfriend’s three-year-old son, Caiden Fedora. In January, District Judge Michael N. “Nick” Deegan sentenced Nielsen to life in prison.

Nielsen, 23, appealed the ruling based on what his attorneys believed to be improper testimony by the prosecution’s expert witnesses and improper questioning of the defense’s expert witness.

They claimed the prosecution used expert witnesses to get around proving Nielsen abused the boy. Instead of using them to “es...