Court challenge viable in ’65 death

LITTLE ROCK — A ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court last year provides an avenue for a convicted murderer from Little Rock who fled the state more than 40 years earlier to challenge his life sentence, Arkansas defense attorneys say.

Lester Stiggers, now 63, was convicted in 1965, at age 15, of first-degree murder in the shooting death of his father.

Five years later, Stiggers fled Arkansas while on a prison furlough, and then-Michigan Gov. William Milliken granted him asylum.

Last month, Arkansas sent a request to current Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder asking, once again, for Stiggers’ arrest and extradition.

Michigan had not responded to the request as of Friday, and a spokesman for Snyder said “no timeline has been set” for making a decision.

Even if Snyder grants the request, Arkansas defense attorneys said the June 25 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court gives Stiggers a basis to challenge his life sentence.

The court, ruling on cases from Arkansas and Alabama, found that sentencing youthful offenders to mandatory sentences of life without parole violates the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

Little Rock defense attorney Jeff Rosenzweig said the ruling applies to Stiggers because, at the time of his conviction, first-degree murder in Arkansas was punishable only by death or life in prison.

“A mandatory life sentence is not constitutional” for youthful offenders, Rosenzweig said.

Pulaski County Prosecuting Attorney Larry Jegley agreed that Stiggers could “perhaps challenge his sentence.”

But he said Stiggers should be returned to prison in Arkansas first.

“You’ve got to pay for your crimes,” Jegley said. “He needs to be treated just like anyone else in similar circumstances.”

The Arkansas Department of Correction has said Stiggers is believed to be living in Warren, Mich., a Detroit suburb. Contact information for Stiggers could not be located.

Stiggers was convicted for shooting his father, J.A. Stiggers, a 44-year-old city employee, in the stomach with a shotgun in the kitchen of the family’s Little Rock home on Jan. 4, 1965.

In 1970, Stiggers was granted a five-day furlough from prison as a reward for good behavior. He never returned, and an Arkansas judge issued a warrant for his arrest.

About a year later, Stiggers was arrested in Detroit. Arkansas Gov. Dale Bumpers requested Stiggers’ extradition, but Milliken refused, saying he believed Stiggers had shown he could be a productive citizen.

Arkansas made another request, while Bill Clinton was governor, in 1979, that was also denied, Correction Department spokesman Shea Wilson said.

She said she did not have a record of Arkansas making another request until last month. That request came after Correction Department officials were alerted late last year that Stiggers had applied for Social Security benefits.

“Until that alert came and we took another look at it, it was not on anyone’s radar,” Wilson said.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruling came in the cases of Arkansas inmate Kuntrell Jackson, convicted of capital murder in a killing that happened when Jackson was 14, and Evan Miller of Alabama.

Finding the convicts’ mandatory life sentences unconstitutional, the court said judges and juries must have the discretion to consider an offender’s youth in determining the severity of a crime and the possibility the offender could be rehabilitated.

In Jackson’s case, the Arkansas Supreme Court is considering arguments on what should happen next.

The state attorney general’s office has asked for his sentence to be changed to one of life with the possibility of parole or for a new sentencing hearing to be held in Mississippi County Circuit Court.

Jackson’s attorneys have argued that a sentencing hearing is required.

Attorney Gerald Schwartzbach, who represented Stiggers in the 1971 extradition proceedings in Michigan, said he hopes Snyder denies Arkansas’ extradition request.

He said Stiggers should have been prosecuted as a youthful offender rather than as an adult, did not have an adequate defense at his trial and was given an excessive sentence.

Stiggers told authorities that his father repeatedly beat him and sexually abused him. The day of the shooting, he said his father had confronted him about being home from school for walking in the halls.

“It’s just really, really hard to imagine why they would want to put Lester back in prison to die,” said Schwartzbach, who said he hasn’t spoken to Stiggers since leaving Michigan for California in 1972.

Matt DeCample, a spokesman for Arkansas Gov. Mike Beebe, said considerations about whether a sentence was excessive are not part of the extradition process, but could be raised in a request for clemency.

“Our role in extradition cases is to carry out requests for extradition from the ADC or prosecutors,” DeCample said.

Wilson said Stiggers is the only fugitive being sought by Arkansas who has been granted asylum in another state.

Arkansas has been involved in other extradition disputes in the past, however.

In 1980, the California Supreme Court attempted to block the extradition of James Dean Walker, a murderer who failed to return from a prison furlough in 1975 and was apprehended in South Lake Tahoe, Calif., in 1979.

The California court ordered a trial court in that state to conduct hearings to determine whether the conditions in Arkansas prisons violated the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment.

Overturning California’s high court, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that arguments about the constitutionality of Arkansas prisons should be heard in courts in Arkansas rather than in California.

Walker, convicted of killing a North Little Rock police officer, returned to Arkansas and was granted a new trial by a federal appeals court. He pleaded no contest to manslaughter in the killing in 1986 and was sentenced to time served.

When Stiggers was captured in Michigan, he also cited conditions in Arkansas prisons. The state’s prison system had been declared unconstitutional in 1970 by U.S. District Judge J. Smith Henley, who described it as a “dark and evil world.”

U.S. District Judge G. Thomas Eisele found the system constitutional in 1982.

Little Rock defense attorney John Wesley Hall Jr., who wrote a 1978 manual on extradition, said governors usually respond to extradition requests within a couple of days, and the requests are almost always granted.

Under Article IV of the U.S. Constitution, “A person charged in any State with Treason, Felony, or other Crime, who shall flee from Justice, and be found in another State, shall on Demand of the Executive Authority of the State from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the state having Jurisdiction of the Crime.” The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1987 that federal courts can order an extradition when a governor refuses to grant it.

“The whole concept of extradition is that people will be returned,” Hall said. “It’s to create safety in a system so Arkansas bail bondsmen and law enforcement officers won’t go running to Michigan to try to capture someone and bring them back.”