LITTLE ROCK — The appeals process after a 1992 murder case did not correct a jury’s sentencing mistake, the Arkansas Supreme Court said Thursday, so death-row inmate Frank Williams Jr. gets a new sentencing session.
The form filled out by the jury says there was no evidence of mitigating circumstances that might have resulted in a reduced sentence, even though evidence of such circumstances was presented.
The Supreme Court sent the case back to the Lafayette County Circuit Court for new sentencing proceedings.
Williams was convicted in the 1992 slaying of Clyde Spence, a Lafayette County farmer who had fired him, and has been on death row since 1993.
Justice Paul Danielson wrote in the court’s unanimous opinion that the court made its decision “not based on the specific arguments of Williams, but because there was indeed a breakdown in the appellate process in this death penalty case.”
This is not the first time the Supreme Court has reviewed the Williams case - it has previously denied Williams’ direct appeal and his request for Rule 37 post-conviction relief.
But Williams asked the court to reopen the case at the direct-appeal stage and at the Rule 37 post-conviction relief stage of the appeals process.
The court took another look at its review of the case and found that it had been wrong the first time around, when it ruled that the jury had considered aggravating and mitigating circumstances.
Arkansas law states that if a defendant is found guilty of capital murder, the same jury must sit again to hear additional evidence for sentencing. During this phase, the jury can weigh aggravating circumstances, such as previous felony convictions, against mitigating circumstances, such as the defendant’s background, character, history and mental condition, in deciding whether to impose the death penalty.
A death sentence is allowed only if the jury finds there was at least one aggravating circumstance beyond a reasonable doubt.
The jury found that Williams’ previous felony conviction for threatening a lawenforcement officer with an 8-inch butcher knife was an aggravating circumstance that allowed them to sentence him to death instead of life in prison.
In filings with the Supreme Court, Williams’ attorneyscontinued to argue that he was innocent of that crime and that it should not have been presented as an aggravating circumstance.Though the jury was presented with evidence that William grew up in a dysfunctional family, had a violent and deprived background, was intoxicated at the time of the murder and has a low IQ , the jury checked a box on a sentencing form that said “there was no evidence of any mitigating circumstance.”
In its ruling Thursday, the Supreme Court found that it was a mistake for the jury to check that box, since unchallenged evidence of mitigating circumstances had been presented.
The jurors did not have to find that evidence convincing - on the same form they could have chosen another option saying that there had been evidence of mitigating circumstances, but the circumstances did not exist at the time of the murder.
“While the evidence presented may or may not have established that a mitigating circumstance ‘probably existed’ for the murder, it was certainly offered for that purpose,” Danielson wrote.
But the way the jury answered the questions on the form “allows us only to conclude that the jury eliminated from its consideration all evidence presented of mitigating circumstances, and sentenced Williams to death solely based on the aggravating circumstance, which is reversible error,” he continued.
The court based its decision on a similar ruling in 2004, when it overturned the death sentence of Justin Anderson for the same reason.
In the new proceedings, there will be an opportunity for a full hearing on the question of whether Williams is mentally retarded, Danielson noted in a footnote to the opinion.
His attorneys argued in filings with the Supreme Court that there was “abundant, credible and compelling evidence” that Williams is mentally retarded, and the fact that this evidence was presented at trial was a sign that his attorneys were ineffective.
Special Justice Steven Quattlebaum joined the opinion in place of Justice Donald Corbin, who recused from the case.
At the Supreme Court the case is CR93-988, Frank Williams Jr. v. State.
Arkansas, Pages 21 on 12/16/2011