MO Supreme Court upholds death penalty in “sex tape” murder

June 29, 2010 By

The state Supreme Court has upheld the conviction and death sentence of a man involved in one of the Kansas City area’s most sensational recent murder cases.

Richard Davis was convicted of murdering a woman he and his girlfriend, Dena Riley, had sexually abused and killed. Jurors saw a videotape that showed Davis and Riley suffocating Independence resident Marsha Spicer.

All seven judges agree the trial court made none of the mistakes Davis claims it made. The court split on two other points in the case but upheld the trial court’s decision on each issue.

Riley, the girlfriend, is in prison for life without parole.

Story by Bob Priddy, Missourinet

Briefs, summaries of the written arguments and link to the audio of the oral arguments »

Filed Under: News

High court won’t hear MO lethal injection case

June 29, 2010 By

A major move from the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday, affecting the enforcement of the death penalty in Missouri. The court denied hearing the Clemons v. Crawford case. Attorney General Chris Koster explains the implications:

“The Missouri death penalty protocol has been tangled up in the federal courts on and off for more than two years now. The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision should clear the final hurdles and legitimize the constitutionality of Missouri’s death penalty protocol and we can now go forward with these death penalty cases,” Koster said.

Executions in Missouri had been put on hold by the Eighth Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals while the case was reviewed. That Court’s ruling led to the petition to the U.S. Supreme Court.

“The basic argument that was put forth in the Clemons v. Crawford case was that the three drug protocol caused paralysis but then one of the drugs that was injected into the defendant’s body would cause excruciating internal suffering prior to death. That case the federal courts decided was no proven, and the U.S. Supreme Court said that the Missouri three-drug protocol, the same standard that is used in most of the 50 state that have the death penalty, is constitutional,” Koster said.

He is wasting no time getting the process started again.

“We will now go back to the Missouri Supreme Court and in appropriate cases where all the federal appeals have been run, we will go ahead and ask the Missouri Supreme Court to set execution dates,” Koster said.

Koster says he’s already asked the Missouri Supreme Court to set an execution date for Joseph Franklin, a ‘neo-Nazi murderer’ who shot three people outside a St. Louis synagogue, killing one of them. Franklin also killed four other people in incidents in Utah and Wisconsin and bombed a synagogue in Tennessee.

Story by Ryan Famuliner, Missourinet.com [AUDIO :60]

Filed Under: Uncategorized

Gary Black enters plea to avoid death penalty

May 6, 2010 By

“To avoid the possibility of another death sentence at his third trial this summer, Gary W. Black this week sought and obtained a plea bargain that will keep him locked up for the rest of his life for the 1998 stabbing death of Jason Johnson.

Black, 54, entered an Alford plea Wednesday in Jasper County Circuit Court to the first-degree murder charge he has been facing for 12 years.

Black was twice convicted of the charge and twice sentenced to die by Jasper County juries. Both convictions were overturned by the Missouri Supreme Court, and a third capital-murder trial was set to begin in late July, with selection of jurors from Cass County.”

Full story in Joplin Globe »

Filed Under: News

State of Missouri vs. Gregory Bowman

April 29, 2010 By

SC90618 – Velda Rumfelt was murdered in 1977. There were ligature marks and a laceration around her throat. The medical examiner concluded that strangulation was the cause of death. No one was charged with the murder.

In 1979, Gregory Bowman was convicted in Illinois of killing Ruth Ann Jany and Elizabeth West and was sentenced to two concurrent terms of life imprisonment. In 2001, the convictions were vacated and new trials were ordered on grounds that Bowman’s confessions were coerced. Bowman remained in jail in Illinois until he posted bail in 2007.

Shortly after Bowman’s release from jail, James Rokita, an investigator with the Belleville, Illinois, police department, forwarded Bowman’s DNA profile to the St. Louis County police department. St. Louis County investigators compared Bowman’s DNA profile to the DNA profile extracted from sperm recovered from Rumfelt’s underwear. Bowman’s DNA profile matched the DNA profile of the sperm recovered from Rumfelt’s underwear. Bowman was charged with Rumfelt’s murder.

The State presented evidence that Bowman’s DNA was found in Rumfelt’s underwear. Dr. Mary Case, the St. Louis County medical examiner, testified that the cause of death was strangulation and that Rumfelt was the victim of a probable sexual assault. One of Rumfelt’s friends testified that she saw Rumfelt walking with an unidentified young man on the evening of June 5, 1977. Another friend testified that she saw Rumfelt on the morning of June 6, 1977. Rumfelt’s body was discovered on June 7, 1977. The jury convicted Bowman of first-degree murder.

Filed Under: Current Death Row Inmates

Anti-death penalty advocates say Clemons case raises questions

March 11, 2010 By

The discovery of long-hidden evidence in a 19-year old murder case fuels hopes of death penalty opponents that the state will declare a moratorium on executions for two years. Reginald Clemons, Marlin Gray, and two others were convicted in 1993 of the rapes and murders of two St. Louis sisters who were thrown off a St. Louis bridge into the Mississippi River. Gray was executed five years ago. Clemons would have been executed last June but a stay was issued and a special judge is reviewing the case.

A few days ago, three lab reports and some physical evidence was discovered in the St. Louis police crime lab and says the evidence had been disclosed to the defense.

Executive Director Donnie Morehouse of Missourians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty says the discovery nine months after Clemons was supposed to die carries a message. “What has been going on and why has that evidence been sitting there and why has it not come forward and why it’s just now at this time come forward. I think those are questions legislators should be asking,” he says.

The Attorney General wants a quick court ruling on how this information should be processed. Morehouse’s group and other death penalty organizations had planned before the evidence was found to have a rally at the Capitol next week. Morehouse says the revelations about the evidence will give more weight to the push for a moratorium. [Story by Missourinet's Bob Priddy]

AUDIO Interviw with Donnie Morehouse (8 min MP3)

Filed Under: News
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