A man sentenced to death for the 1993 killing of a man in a Little Rock laundromat should have his case reopened and be resentenced because the jury incorrectly filled out its verdict form, his attorney told the Arkansas Supreme Court on Thursday.
Little Rock attorney Josh Lee said the high court has previously overturned death-penalty cases because of similar errors made on jury forms, namely that jurors indicated that they did not hear mitigating evidence to weigh along with the aggravating evidence.
In the case of Terrick Nooner, the jury marked the section of a verdict form that stated there “was no evidence of any mitigating circumstance,” while it should have marked a section that said evidence was presented, but the jurors agreed that a mitigating circumstance did not exist, Lee said.
Lee said that without the jury’s “written proof” in the case of Nooner, the court could not be sure that the jurors had considered the evidence in their sentencing.
Lee told the court that it was possible that the jury “entirely disregarded” mitigating evidence such as Nooner’s “troubled childhood” and alcohol abuse. Nooner also suffers from severe mental illness, according to court filings.
“The mitigating evidence that I laid out is substantial,” Lee said.
Nooner, now 42, was convicted in September 1993 by a Pulaski County jury in the March 16, 1993, shooting death of Scot Stobaugh, who was shot seven times and robbed inside the Fun Wash laundry at 4206 W. Markham St. in Little Rock. Nooner’s accomplice, Robert Rockett, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and is serving a 65-year sentence.
The court held a separate penalty-phase hearing after which the jury reported two items of aggravating circumstances: that Nooner had previously committed a felony involving the use or the threat of violence, and that he committed the murder “for pecuniary gain,” according to court filings.
The jury found that there was no evidence of mitigating circumstances, according to their verdict forms, Lee wrote in court filings.
Nooner was sentenced to death and is being held at the Varner Supermax prison in Gould, according to Department of Correction records.
Nooner’s defense attorneys filed several unsuccessful appeals over the 12 years after his conviction, before Rockett told police that he had shot Stobaugh and that Nooner was the getaway driver.
Nooner was allowed a second federal appeal, but it was rejected by U.S. District Judge Leon Holmes in January 2010.
Lee said the court should reopen the case and remand it for resentencing as it did in two previous death-penalty cases. In those instances, the court found “that a jury commits reversible error when it marks its sentencing-phase verdict forms in a way that indicates that it entirely failed to consider evidence offered in mitigation and that this error is in a narrow class of manifest, fundamental defects in a death sentencing proceeding that may be raised at any time,” according to court filings.
Senior Assistant Attorney General Kelly Fields said the court has already reviewed the case and shouldn’t allow it to be reopened.
Fields said the court has also previously found that when all of a person’s appeals have been exhausted, that “the interest of finality … is paramount.”
“We don’t go back and change cases,” Fields said.
Arkansas, Pages 10 on 02/21/2014