Failure by prosecutors to supply jurors with the required number of sentencing forms prompted the Arkansas Supreme Court to void a prisoner's death sentence in a double murder from New Year's Eve three decades ago.
By a 5-2 margin, the high court recalled its mandate to execute Steven Wertz, 66, reversed the death sentence handed out by jurors after a 2007 trial and remanded the case to circuit court for resentencing.
Justice Robin Wynne noted that jurors filled out one set of forms indicating Wertz's guilt in the 1986 slaying of an Ash Flat couple -- Terry and Kathy Watts -- but did not fill out the requisite second set that detailed aggravating and mitigating circumstances.
The Sharp County oversight constituted a "defect in the appellate process," which receives heightened scrutiny from the Supreme Court in capital cases.
"The submission of a single set of [sentencing] forms makes it impossible to determine whether the jury applied the aggravator to Terry's murder, Kathy's murder, or both murders," Wynne wrote. "The submission of a single set of forms was an error that impacts the validity of the death sentence imposed by the jury, as, under our law, it is necessary for an aggravating factor to be found to exist before a death sentence can be imposed, and we cannot say from this record to which count or counts of capital murder the aggravators were applied."
Justice Rhonda Wood dissented, arguing that there was no breakdown in the appellate process.
Dissenting in a separate opinion, Justice Paul Danielson wrote that if any error occurred, it was during the guilt phase and not the penalty-sentencing phase.
Danielson wrote that the older version of the state's capital murder statute used in Wertz's prosecution required two or more deaths to qualify as a single capital murder offense.
"My review of our cases ... reveals that a person charged under that statute with causing two or more deaths was historically charged with, tried for, and convicted of only one count," Danielson wrote. "Rather than [recall the mandate] ... I would order supplemental briefing ... of whether a double-jeopardy violation occurred."
Double jeopardy is a defense that prevents someone from being tried twice for the same crime.
Terry Watts was blasted with a shotgun through a window early on Dec. 31, 1986. He was shot again at close range, and his throat was slashed.
Prosecutors said Wertz then pried open a bedroom door where Kathy Watts was hiding and shot her at close range. The couple's 1-year-old child was unharmed and was found on Terry Watts' corpse.
Wertz, who lived in Oklahoma at the time, told investigators that he and Jamie Snyder Jr. spent Dec. 30, 1986, at his home. Investigators verified his alibi that the next day he went to a clinic.
In 2001, a detective reopened the cold case and over the course of five years, found enough cause to have Wertz and Snyder arrested and charged in the slayings.
Snyder testified against Wertz, whose motive was that Wertz's wife was in a child custody dispute with Terry Watts.
Wertz was convicted and sentenced in July 2007. The high court later ruled against him on appeal on other issues.
But during oral arguments in February of this year, the question of whether Wertz was properly convicted of one or two capital murder charges caught the justices' attention. They ordered further briefs, leading to Thursday's ruling.
State attorneys argued that the couple's murder was a single incident and that though charged with two counts of capital murder, the single set of forms was sufficient for a single conviction and sentence of the crime.
Wertz's attorney argued that Wertz's rights to due process were violated by not having jurors spell out the aggravating and mitigating factors in both of the Wattses' killings.
Wertz remains imprisoned at the state's maximum-security lockup in Gould.
Metro on 06/10/2016