Topeka ? Cornelius Devon Oliver escaped the death penalty for shooting four people in a Wichita duplex five years ago, but he’s still likely to die behind bars, because of a Kansas Supreme Court ruling Friday.

A unanimous court upheld Oliver’s four first-degree murder convictions and his life sentence for each. Because a judge ordered him to serve the sentences consecutively, Oliver, 23, wouldn’t be eligible for parole for 150 years.

The shootings occurred in December 2000 in the home of Oliver’s estranged girlfriend, Raeshawnda Wheaton. Wheaton, 18, was a victim, as was her roommate, Odessa Ford, 17; Ford’s cousin, Quincy Williams, 17, and another man, Jermaine Levy, 19.

Prosecutors unsuccessfully sought the death penalty against Oliver.

Oliver was a gang member, and Williams and Levy belonged to a rival gang, but police were wary of describing the crimes as gang-related, partly because of Oliver’s rocky relationship with Wheaton. Oliver’s defense included medical records that suggested he was being treated for a violent mental disorder and was hearing voices.

He gave police a detailed confession to the four shootings but later recanted. His attorneys attacked the confession, but Judge Joseph Bribiesca wouldn’t permit a psychologist to testify that mental disorders made Oliver likely to lie to police during his interrogation.

The Supreme Court said the judge “reasonably resisted” a “late-blooming, all-or-nothing” demand for allowing the psychologist to testify about whether Oliver’s confession was credible.

“Credibility judgments are within the exclusive province of the jury,” Justice Carol Beier wrote in the court’s opinion. “The district judge would have erred in reaching the opposite conclusion.”

The justices acknowledged that courts in other states allow testimony about how certain mental disorders might affect someone’s actions or truthfulness – but only in general.

Such testimony must remain “hypothetical or theoretical,” the court said, and stop short of allowing an expert to express an opinion on whether an individual defendant was truthful in a specific circumstance.

“Allowing an expert to say that a defendant’s mental condition specifically caused him or her to lie when confessing is a forbidden invasion of the jury’s province,” Beier wrote.