The U.S. Supreme Court gave inmates another way to challenge rulings preventing the testing of evidence that might prove their innocence.
In a 6-3 ruling Monday the high court said inmates have to right to sue for civil rights violations in federal court, if they are denied DNA testing on the state level. The case involved Henry “Hank” Skinner, a death row inmate in Texas.
Skinner filed a federal suit against the prosecutor who withheld the evidence and argued against its testing. But Skinner’s case had been thrown out by lower courts. The Supreme Court said his suit should proceed.
It doesn’t mean Skinner will win, but it gives inmates seeking to prove their innocence another way to get access to evidence. While 48 states, including Kansas, have laws allowing such testing, many requests are not granted by narrow readings of the law.
In Kansas, many are summarily dismissed.
Monday’s Supreme Court could also influence how hard prosecutors fight against providing such evidence, said Rebecca Woodman, adjunct law professor at the Washburn Law School.
“Allowing prisoners to maintain an independent civil rights action to vindicate their due process rights lessens the ability of prosecutors to hide behind procedural rules,” she said.
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A lot of the people using this meme have blogged about trivial stuff. My time has been absorbed by the grim reality of the justice system, so that’s what I’ve chosen to write about. Here are thoughts, observations and personal notes that are helping me process the trial I’ve covered the past three weeks — a day after seeing Justin Thurber sentenced to death for killing Jodi Sanderholm:
- The details I don’t, and won’t, report about the brutality of the crime are the ones that keep me awake at night.
- There is no way to try to make sense of a senseless crime.
- Here’s something else that doesn’t make sense. Even after being convicted, under overwhelming evidence , Thurber told a psychologist a version of how he claimed to kill Sanderholm — by stabbing her — that could not be supported by any other physical evidence.
- Defense attorney Ron Evans gave one of the most stirring closing arguments I’ve ever heard. But even that didn’t convince a jury to spare Thurber’s life.
- In a country where everyone is guaranteed the right to a legal defense, I have to respect lawyers such as Ron Evans and Tim Frieden, who choose to represent defendants charged with the worst crimes.
- Cowley County Attorney Chris Smith asked that people remember the Thurber family’s suffering, even after he’d spent two years working to prosecute Thurber. I’ve known Smith for years, and that tells you how compassionate he is.
- For some, the stress doesn’t stop — assistant Kansas Attorney General Vic Braden will go from prosecuting this case to being deployed to Afghanistan for the Kansas National Guard in April.
- Cindy Sanderholm, Jodi’s mother, told me she realized that large groups of people had offered support to their family throughout the past two years, but Thurber’s family had little community support.
- Brian Sanderholm, whose family had been in the news spotlight for two years, thanked reporters after the trial for their sensitivity. It’s something you don’t hear often in my job.
- Burying myself in my stories is a way to deal with the pain I see in the courtroom.
- “It’s given me insight into our court system that I hadn’t had before.” Comments like that, from Skyler Lovelace, and others who follow my coverage on Twitter, remind me why my job is important.
- I woke up with chest pains Tuesday morning, before the verdict, caused by the anxiety of the trial.
- I was in tears on the drive back to Wichita from Winfield Tuesday, trying to absorb all the emotions I’d experienced.
- I celebrated my birthday and my wedding anniversary during the trial.
- I just have to sit in the courtroom and hear words and see pictures. The police are the ones who actually see the crime up close and live with it.
- I especially have to admire the police who sifted through the waste tank at the lakeside latrine where they retrieved Jodi Sanderholm’s shoes, jacket and belongings. Anyone who’s held their nose while using such a restroom can only imagine the dedication that must take.
- I wonder how Dave Falletti of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, the lead investigator of the case, digests all the brutality he’s seen.
- The police in Arkansas City, a town of 12,000, showed the same high level of investigative skills as what I’ve seen from Wichita police in similar cases. That speaks well of law enforcement training, no matter what the department’s size.
- After seeing the pictures of the crime scene and the state of Jodi Sanderholm’s body, I keep asking myself, “What would enrage someone to the point they’d be capable of this?”
- They were some of the most disturbing crime-scene photos I’d ever seen.
- I have no doubt Jodi Sanderholm was tortured.
- After I go through weeks like this, I make sure I have someone to talk to about the worst of it.
- I hope more testing is done on Thurber’s IQ and mental state before his death sentence is carried out.
- After a decade of covering capital murder trials, and seeing the violence people are capable of inflicting on each other, I’m still not sure how I feel about the death penalty.
- There is nothing more sobering than watching 12 people condemn another human being to die.
I’m spending my days for the next couple of weeks in Winfield, covering the capital murder trial of Justin Thurber.
Thurber is accused of raping and killing 19-year-old Jodi Sanderholm on Jan. 5, 2007. He could get the death penalty if convicted.
You can keep up with live coverage of the trial by following my updates via the micro blogging site Twitter on the left side of this page, on widgets connected to stories about the trial on Kansas.com or by following me on Twitter.
A judge today denied a request by capital murder defendant Elgin Ray Robinson Jr. to withhold from the jury statements he made to police denying that he was involved in the killing of Chelsea Brooks.
Robinson
Judge Ben Burgess ruled that Robinson’s statements to police could be used at his trial beginning next month, where he’s accused of orchestrating the murder-for-hire of his pregnant 14-year-old girlfriend in the summer of 2006.
Robinson, 22, said during brief testimony that police coerced statements from him, although he never admitted being involved in the killing.
Prosecutors said they didn’t plan on using his statements, anyway.
The trial is set to begin with jury selection Sept. 22.
Ted Burnett’s capital murder defense won a rare victory before his trial begins next week.
Judge Ben Burgess ruled that Steven White’s testimony was unreliable, or hearsay. White had claimed he had information from Burnett’s girlfriend, Trudy Guthrie, that Burnett confessed in a jailhouse telephone call to killing Chelsea Brooks.
Guthrie denied taking such a phone call from Burnett. Then under cross-examination during the preliminary hearing 18 months ago, White couldn’t remember for sure where Guthrie had heard it.
The information was not just hearsay, lawyer Gary Owens argued for Burnett, but “double hearsay.” Burgess agreed.
Prosecutors had fought to keep the testimony in, because it might have bolstered Everett Gentry’s testimony that Burnett strangled the pregnant teenager in what the state says is a murder-for-hire scheme.
Burnett, 51, goes on trial for capital murder, when jury selection starts next week.
Watch for blog updates during jury selection here and then on the Kansas.com home page for live updates from the courtroom during the trial.
Cowley County District Judge Jim Pringle admitted it’s won’t be easy deciding if he will admit wrenching testimony from women who say Justin Thurber followed them, harassed them and molested them for years before Jodi Sanderholm’s killing.
“This would make a law school professor lethal, licking his chops about what questions he could put on a law exam,” Pringle said of the 17 different decisions ahead of him.
Prosecutors are seeking to admit the testimony at Thurber’s capital murder trial, of what’s usually known as “prior bad acts.” Usually, that kind of testimony is inadmissible, but under Kansas law it can be permitted under certain circumstances.
Those include:
- If evidence shows a pattern of behavior consistent with the crimes being charged
- If it relates to an important aspect of a case.
- It is valuable in helping to understand a case.
Thurber’s public defenders argue the testimony isn’t relevant to Sanderholm’s death.
