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Sunday, January 20, 2008

Ind. Courts - "Revised law in play on Wilkes sentence"

Kate Braser of the Evansville Courier & Press reports today:

Vanderburgh Circuit Court Judge Carl Heldt will decide this week whether Daniel Ray Wilkes will be put to death for the murders of an Evansville mother and her two young daughters.

State death penalty experts said Heldt's ruling could mark the first time an Indiana judge has had to make such a decision since state law was changed in 2002.

That change requires a judge to follow a jury's sentencing recommendation in the case. Before that, judges needed only to consider the jury's recommendation, but could enter a different penalty in a capital murder case.

Last month, 12 jurors seated to hear the trial in Clark County, Ind., convicted Wilkes of three counts of murder in the April 2006 slayings of Donna Claspell and her daughters, 13-year-old Avery and 8-year-old Sydne.

In the penalty phase of the trial, the jurors deliberated for more than five hours before telling Heldt they were hopelessly deadlocked 11-to-1 over the decision regarding what penalty Wilkes should face.

Heldt will pick up where those jurors left off during a sentencing hearing scheduled for 10:30 a.m. Friday.

Defense attorneys have previously said they believe the situation will result in interesting legal issues. They said in some other states, laws require a judge to sentence a defendant to life in prison without parole when a jury cannot reach a unanimous decision regarding the death penalty.

That is not the case in Indiana. Here, laws require that if a jury cannot reach a unanimous verdict about the penalty in a capital murder case, the trial judge alone shall determine the sentence. * * *

Clark County, Indiana, Prosecutor Steve Stewart keeps detailed records of state death row cases, compiling them into books.

"No judge has been in this position to my knowledge since the law changed in 2002," he said of the decision Heldt must make this week.

Stewart said Heldt likely will consider the aggravating factors cited by Levco.

"In the normal case, if a jury is hung on the penalty phase, there will be no jury unanimously saying an aggravating circumstance existed," Stewart said. "But there are some cases where that unanimous finding will be inherent at that point in the trial. This may be the case in this case."

Stewart explained that because the jury already found Wilkes' guilty of the three murders and because Sydne Claspell was 8 years old, there is little question those aggravators were likely unanimously agreed to by the jury.

"That is sufficient to satisfy the requirements of the law, and enough to put this decision squarely in the hands of the judge," he said.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on January 20, 2008 12:54 PM
Posted to Ind. Trial Ct. Decisions