LITTLE ROCK — A federal appeals court panel expressed frustration Wednesday at the legal limitations that have thwarted an Arkansas death-row inmate's attempts to properly appeal his conviction and sentence.
"This is a sad case," wrote Senior U.S. Circuit Judge Myron Bright as the three-judge panel upheld a dismissal of the inmate's federal appeal, agreeing that such arguments must first be aired at the state Supreme Court.
The arguments weren't properly aired because of the "deplorable conduct" of the appellate attorney, James O. Clawson, who it was later discovered was a felon who had been disbarred in Oklahoma but had hidden those pertinent facts from Jimmy Don Wooten and the Arkansas courts.
Clawson was hired by the defendant, Wooten, to pursue a claim that Wooten's trial attorney, David Gibbons, had been ineffective. But Clawson "failed miserably," Bright said, and because of Clawson's errors, Wooten's appeals were likely cut off permanently at the state and federal level.
In 1995, a Pope County jury convicted Wooten, then 31 and from Dover, of capital murder in the Aug. 5, 1994, shooting death of a hiker from Louisiana and the wounding of his friend.
Hiker David William LaSalle, 45, was killed by a shot to the head, while three other shots injured his friend, Henry "Ted" Porter, 56, as the men and Porter's 18-year-old daughter hiked west of the Long Pool Recreation Area on the Big Piney River in the Ozark National Forest. The daughter, Molly, fled and escaped injury.
The jury found that Wooten shot at the hikers from a position in the woods after first stopping his all-terrain vehicle to talk amiably with them. Wooten said another man who looked just like him had stolen the vehicle from him and was the gunman.
An appeal that Clawson filed on Wooten's behalf didn't raise important factual issues, including the first lawyer's failure to bring up Wooten's mental-health issues and tragic life history, the federal panel noted. After the Arkansas Supreme Court at one point remanded the case to the trial court for further proceedings, Clawson didn't follow up or tell Wooten about the remand.
Other attorneys who were later appointed hired psychiatrists who concluded that Wooten had mental problems. But those assertions couldn't be weighed in subsequent federal appeals proceedings because they hadn't been raised at the state level first.
"This relation of the court procedures represents a breakdown in the criminal-justice system of great magnitude," Bright said. "It seems to be obvious, even to any observer, that the criminal justice system failed in this case, both during the penalty phase and the post-conviction proceedings."
He opined that "the current legal landscape ... does not permit the intervention of the federal courts at this time."
Unless the Arkansas Supreme Court takes "extraordinary" action in granting an ambiguously unresolved motion to recall a mandate, Wooten has no further avenues available to appeal.
"This appears to be a case that could satisfy" the rare requirements that must be met before the state Supreme Court could reopen a case, the panel noted. "However, that is an issue for the Arkansas Supreme Court to decide. "
The panel also consisted of U.S. circuit judges Michael Melloy of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and William Jay Riley of Omaha, Neb.
Arkansas, Pages 13 on 08/29/2009