The state supreme court has let the murder conviction stand but has thrown out the death penalty for prison inmate Mark Gill. More »

State v. Christeson , 50 S.W.3d 251, 257 (Mo.banc 2001)

Case Facts: The victim, Ralph Lee Lape, Jr., lived alone in rural Cape Girardeau County. During the summer of 2002, Mr. Lape allowed Gill to live in a camper trailer on his property as a favor to a mutual friend. Mr. Lape spent the Fourth of July holiday weekend at Kentucky Lake, while Gill and a friend, Justin Brown, remained at Mr. Lape’s home. During this time, Brown looked through Mr. Lape’s personal papers and learned that he had a large amount of money in his bank account. Brown and Gill decided that they would kill Mr. Lape for his money, and on Saturday, July 6, they began preparations for the killing. They obtained a .22 pistol from Mr. Lape’s home and bought a roll of duct tape, and they decided to “get him” in the garage because “once you pull in the garage can’t nobody see.”

Mr. Lape arrived home from Kentucky Lake on Sunday, July 7, at approximately 5:30 p.m. Gill and Brown, who were waiting in the garage, opened the garage door for him. After Mr. Lape stepped out of his extended cab pickup truck, Gill and Brown “grabbed him,” and Gill told Mr. Lape that they “just wanted his money.” Mr. Lape pleaded to Gill, “You don’t have to do this…I’ll give you what you want. Mark, I ain’t done nothing but try to help you.” Gill and Brown then bound Mr. Lape with plastic ties and the duct tape. They pushed up the backseat of Mr. Lape’s truck and “slid him in.” They divided $240 they found in a ziplock bag that Mr. Lape had been carrying. Gill then put shovels in the back of the truck because he “knew what [he] was fixin’ to do, [he] was going to hell.”

Gill drove the truck south on Interstate 55 as Brown held Mr. Lape down on the floorboard. After finding Mr. Lape’s ATM bankcard in the truck, Gill asked him for the pin number, and he told them the number “right off.” Gill and Brown drove Mr. Lape approximately 80 miles to a desolate cornfield near Portageville, where they took turns “knocking down corn” and “digging a hole.” While one of them dug the hole, the other sat in the truck and watched Mr. Lape. After digging the hole, they took Mr. Lape out of the truck and removed the duct tape and plastic ties. Ignoring Mr. Lape’s pleas for mercy, Gill and Brown pushed him into the hole. Then one of them pointed the .22 pistol at Mr. Lape and pulled the trigger, but the gun misfired. The trigger was pulled a second time, but there was another misfire. On the third try, the gun fired and shot Mr. Lape in the forehead, killing him. Gill and Brown then “lined him up in the hole” and removed all of his clothing and jewelry. Before they buried Mr. Lape, Brown “stepped on his head” in order to make it fit in the hole. An autopsy revealed that, in addition to the gunshot wound, Mr. Lape had a skull fracture that was “not caused by the bullet,” three separate bruises on his head, bruising in his chest, and one of his ribs was completely broken in two.

After killing Mr. Lape, Gill and Brown changed clothes back at the house and withdrew money from Mr. Lape’s bank account with his ATM card. They then drove to St. Louis, withdrew more money, and spent nearly a thousand dollars of the money at strip clubs. After spending the night at the Adam’s Mark hotel in St. Louis, Gill and Brown drove back to Mr. Lape’s house, stopping along the way to withdraw more money from Mr. Lape’s bank account.

Once at the house, Gill and Brown began to dispose of the evidence. They dumped the shovels in a wooded area and burned their clothing and the clothing they had removed from Mr. Lape’s body. They threw the gun, Mr. Lape’s jewelry, and other evidence that would not burn into the Mississippi River. Then they drove to Paducah, Kentucky, abandoned Mr. Lape’s truck in a hospital parking lot, and returned to Mr. Lape’s house. When Mr. Lape’s family members inquired about his whereabouts, Gill and Brown told them that he was at Kentucky Lake.

Having withdrawn nearly all of the money from Mr. Lape’s bank account that was accessible with an ATM card, Gill and Brown used Mr. Lape’s computer to transfer $55,000 from another account to the ATM-accessible account. After a friend told Gill that there is no limit in Las Vegas on the amount of money that can be withdrawn from an ATM, Gill and his girlfriend drove there and were married. Gill withdrew approximately $1,600 from Mr. Lape’s account while on the trip.

Ultimately, Gill was arrested in New Mexico. He initially denied any involvement in Mr. Lape’s disappearance and claimed he had permission to use the ATM card. However, he later confessed to planning and participating in the murder, but claimed it was Brown who shot Mr. Lape.

Case Facts: St. Ann police received a 911 call on October 23, 2000, at 3:30 p.m. The call was immediately disconnected. The dispatcher replayed the call and heard a scream. The dispatcher tried to redial the number repeatedly until officers arrived at the source of the call approximately two minutes later. The call originated from the apartment where Eva lived with her two daughters. The older daughter, Zandrea Thomas, was two years old. Strong is the father of the other girl, who was three months old.

When officers arrived at the apartment and knocked, initially there was no answer at the front or back door. They continued to knock and shouted, and Strong eventually came to the back door. Upon inquiries by the police, Strong initially told them Eva and the kids were sleeping. Strong meanwhile stepped outside and closed the door behind him.

The police again asked about Eva, and Strong told them she had gone to work. Because this was an inconsistent response, the police asked about the children, and Strong told them the kids were inside. The officers asked if they could check on the children, and Strong told them he had locked himself out. Strong knocked on the door and called for someone to open it.

Officers noted that Strong was sweating profusely, had dark stains on the knees of his jeans, and had blood on his left hand. They ordered Strong to step aside and kicked in the door. Strong ran. When the officers chased him, Strong told them, “Just shoot me; just shoot me.” After he was handcuffed, he told the officers, “I killed them.”

Inside the apartment, police found the dead bodies of Eva and Zandrea in a back bedroom. They had been stabbed repeatedly with a knife. On the bed, one of the officers found a large butcher knife and a three-month-old baby sitting next to a pool of blood. An autopsy revealed that Eva had been stabbed 21 times, with five slash wounds, and the tip of the knife used to stab her was embedded in her skull. The autopsy of two-year-old Zandrea showed she had been stabbed nine times and had 12 slash wounds.

Strong was charged with both murders. After a trial in St. Louis County, a jury returned a guilty verdict. At the penalty phase trial, the jury found the existence of two statutory aggravators for each murder and recommended a death sentence for Strong. The trial court sentenced Strong accordingly.

Case Facts: In 1990, Kimber Edwards and Kimberly Cantrell divorced. Cantrell received primary physical custody of their daughter, Erica, and Edwards was ordered to pay child support. In 1995, his child support obligation was raised to $351 per month. In March 2000, Edwards was charged with failing to pay any of his child support obligation for one year. He pleaded not guilty, and his case was set for a court appearance on August 25, 2000. Erica stayed with her father, his wife and their two children for three weeks prior to August 22, 2000, at their St. Louis city home. When Erica did not hear from her mother by August 23, and Cantrell did not arrive to pick Erica up, Erica called her aunt. The aunt went to Cantrell’s home and found her dead, shot twice in the head at close range. Cantrell’s 12-year-old neighbor told police he heard shots and a woman’s scream early in the evening of August 22, and his older brother had seen a black man with a black backpack banging on Cantrell’s door that afternoon.

Ortell Wilson, a tenant in one of Edwards’ rental properties who matched the boy’s description ultimately was arrested for and convicted of murdering Cantrell. Wilson implicated Edwards in the murder, and Edwards was arrested August 27, 2000. Edwards waived his Miranda rights and told police he had hired someone named “Michael” to kill Cantrell for $1,600 and that Edwards had helped in the murder.

The jury found Edwards guilty of first-degree murder, found the existence of one statutory aggravating circumstance and recommended the death penalty. The court sentenced Edwards to death, and he appeals.

Case Facts:  In early June of 2000, Michael A. Tisius and Roy Vance were cellmates at the Randolph County Jail in Huntsville, Missouri. Tisius’s sentence lasted thirty days, and Vance told Tisius he would be in jail for some fifty years. As such, Tisius and Vance discussed various schemes where Tisius would return to jail to help Vance escape. In one of those plans, Tisius was to return to the jail with a firearm, force the guards into a cell, and give the gun to Vance, who would then take charge and release all of the inmates.

The Randolph County Jail was a two-story brick building that had been converted from a house. The front door of the jail was kept locked, and the officers could remotely open the door when visitors rang a doorbell. Inside the front door was a small foyer, and to the right behind a counter was the dispatch area where the officers were stationed. A hall led from the dispatch area to the jail cells in the rear of the building.

Tisius was released on June 13, 2000. Shortly after his release, Tisius contacted Vance’s girlfriend, Tracie Bulington, who said that she wanted to go through with the escape plan. Four days later, Bulington drove from Macon to Columbia with a woman named Heather Douglas to pick up Tisius and drive him back to Macon; Tisius and Bulington stayed at Douglas’ home for four or five days. During the ride to Columbia, Douglas heard the two discuss various ways of breaking Vance out of jail, including the idea of locking the jailers in a cell. They told Douglas they were joking. Douglas testified that over the days to follow, she heard Tisius and Bulington say that they were “on a mission,” but they would not elaborate. Tisius and Bulington also described taking cigarettes to Vance at the jail and of having gotten information from a “stupid deputy.” At other times they would stop talking when Douglas entered the room. Douglas also testified that Tisius and Bulington kept a stereo, clothing and camping gear in Bulington’s car and that she also saw a pistol in Bulington’s car.

Beginning June 17, 2000, and continuing over several days, Tisius and Bulington visited the jail several times. At or around 1:30 a.m. or 2 a.m. one of those mornings, they were admitted in the front door and delivered a pack of cigarettes to an on-duty officer, requesting that it be given to Vance. A day or two later, Tisius and Bulington returned to the jail with a pair of socks for Vance and asked questions about his upcoming court date.

Bulington testified that each delivery signified to Vance certain facts, such as that Tisius had made it to town or that the jail break would not occur the night of the delivery. During some of those visits, Tisius kept a .22 caliber pistol that Bulington had taken from her parents’ home in the front of his pants. Tisius had tried to acquire a bigger gun than the one Bulington took. On the night of one of their visits, one officer testified that the Tisius and Bulington were acting “real funny,” nervous and erratic, such that he wrote a police report about the visit.

Tisius tested the gun by firing it outside of Bulington’s car window while the two were driving on country roads on June 21, 2000. Later that evening, Tisius and Bulington drove around listening to a song with the refrain “mo murda” (more murder) as they prepared to get Vance out of jail. Tisius rewound the cassette and played the “mo murda” song over and over. Tisius told Bulington “it was getting about time” and that “he was going to go in and just start shooting and that he had to do what he had to do.” Tisius also said he would go “in with a blaze of glory.”

At 12:15 a.m. on June 22, Tisius and Bulington returned to the Randolph County Jail, rang the doorbell and were admitted. Tisius again carried the pistol in his pants. Tisius and Bulington told the officers they were delivering cigarettes to Vance. The two officers present were Leon Egley and Jason Acton. Tisius made small talk with one of the officers for about ten minutes, discussing what Tisius was planning to do with his life and how Tisius was doing. Bulington testified that at that point, she was about to tell Tisius she was ready to leave but froze as she noticed Tisius had the gun drawn beside his leg. Tisius then raised his arm with the pistol drawn and, from a distance of two to four feet, shot Acton in the forehead above his left eye, killing him instantly. Egley began to approach Tisius, and about ten seconds after he killed Acton, Tisius shot Egley one or more times from a distance of four or five feet, until Egley fell to the ground. Both officers were unarmed.

Tisius then took some keys from the dispatch area and went to Vance’s cell. Tisius could not open the cell, so he returned to the dispatch area to search for more keys. While Tisius was in the dispatch area, Egley grabbed Bulington’s legs from where he was lying on the floor, and Tisius shot him several more times at a distance of two or three feet. Egley suffered five gunshot wounds, three to the forehead, a graze wound to the right cheek and a wound to the upper right shoulder. Not long afterwards, police found Egley gasping for air and a heard gurgling sound; he was surrounded by a pool of blood. Egley died shortly afterward.

Tisius and Bulington fled in her automobile. Tisius threw the keys from the dispatch area out of the car window on the way out of town. Bulington threw the pistol from the car window while crossing a bridge on Highway 36. After the two had passed through St. Joseph and crossed the Kansas state line, Bulington’s car broke down. Later that day, the two were apprehended by the police, and the keys and gun were recovered. After having waived his Miranda rights, Tisius gave oral and written confessions to the murders.

Tisius’s theory at trial was that he was guilty at most of second-degree murder because although he admits that he shot and killed the two officers, he argues that he did so without deliberation.

Case Facts:  Andre Cole and his wife, Terri Cole (Terri), divorced in 1995 after eleven years of marriage. Cole was ordered to pay child support for the care of the couple’s two children but his periodic failure to make payments resulted in an arrearage totaling nearly $3000.00. Upon learning that a payroll withholding order was issued to his employer, Cole commented to his coworkers, “Before I give her another dime I’ll kill the bitch.”

The first payroll deduction for child support appeared on Cole’s August 21, 1998 paycheck, and several hours later Cole forced his entry into Terri’s house by throwing an automobile jack through the glass door leading to the dining room. Anthony Curtis (Curtis), who was visiting Terri, confronted Cole and asked him to leave. Cole stabbed Curtis multiple times resulting in his death. Cole then assaulted Terri, stabbing her repeatedly in the stomach, breasts, back, and arms, and her hands when she attempted to defend herself. Terri survived.

After the attack, Cole fled the state, but he returned to St. Louis and surrendered to the police thirty-three days later. DNA analysis confirmed the presence of both victims’ blood on the knife and the presence of Cole’s blood on the deck of Terri’s home, the backyard fence, and in the street where Cole’s car had been parked.