LITTLE ROCK — A Pulaski County jury deliberated less than three hours Thursday before deciding that Curtis Lavelle Vance should spend the rest of his life in prison for raping and killing Little Rock TV news anchor Anne Pressly in a brutal attack more than a year ago.
A day after convicting the 29-year-old Marianna man of capital murder, rape, burglary and theft of property in the October 2008 attack, the six-man, six-woman jury rejected the death penalty sought by prosecutors. Under Arkansas law, an appeal to the state Supreme Court is automatic.
“There really aren’t any winners tonight,” Pressly’s stepfather, Guy Cannady, said after the sentence was handed down. “Not until he gets carried out of Tucker Max in a pine box will he meet his true judgment.”
Pressly was found by her mother, Patti Cannady, in the pre-dawn hours of Oct. 20, 2008, unconscious with her face shattered beyond recognition. The 26-year-old morning anchor for KATV, Channel 7, never woke up from the attack and died five days later.
Vance was arrested a month after Pressly’s slaying, after DNA from the crime scene matched DNA evidence from a rape in Marianna in which he was a suspect. He would go on to alternately confess and deny the fatal attack on Pressly in interviews with police.
Thursday, as Circuit Judge Chris Piazza announced the jury’s recommendation of life in prison for capital murder, Cannady was in the front row of the courtroom, wearing a pink jacket, her daughter’s favorite color. She’d been barred from attending almost all of the proceedings, since she was a witness in the case. Holding hands with Kristen Edwards, the former Marianna schoolteacher in whose rape seven months before Pressly’s slaying Vance is charged, Cannady was composed and mouthed the words, ‘It’s all right,’ toward prosecutors.
But once jurors were dismissed, Cannady teared up and rebuked Vance’s defenders in a tearful whisper.
“He murdered my daughter,” she said. “You protected someone who should never have been protected.”
At a news conference across the street from the courthouse 15 minutes after sentencing, she joined her husband, police detectives, prosecutors and family and friends, holding hands with Prosecuting Attorney Larry Jegley and her husband, who spoke for her.
Guy Cannady thanked everyone who helped with the case, “hundreds of people who put in tens of thousands of hours.”
He said Vance’s public defenders ultimately couldn’t keep their client from being held responsible.
“When they provided their evidence, when they provided their facts, they came up lacking,” he said.
Life is a fair sentence for Vance, Guy Cannady said. Living out his days in a 6-by-9-foot cell would give Vance ample opportunity to reflect on his crimes, he said.
In addition to the life sentence without parole for Pressly’s murder, jurors recommended life on the rape charge, 20 years with a $15,000 fine for the residential burglary and 10 years with a $10,000 fine for theft. Piazza ordered the sentences to be served consecutively.
Jegley called the jury’s decision “a good strong verdict” that led to a punishment that was the maximum possible short of death.
“I always respect what 12 members of the community decide,” he said.
After the verdict was announced, Pulaski County sheriff's deputies escorted the 12 jurors and two alternates briskly from the courthouse, and they scattered immediately. Those asked for comment declined and kept walking.
Jurors had to read and fill out 35 pages to document their sentencing decision, and the records show they rejected two of the prosecutor’s four reasons that Vance deserved execution: that Pressly was killed in a crime of financial gain and that Vance killed her to keep from getting caught.Jurors did agree with Jegley’s arguments that Vance had committed a violent felony in raping Edwards and that Pressly’s murder was committed in “an especially cruel manner.”
Jurors had to believe only one of those “aggravated circumstances” to call for the death penalty, but they ultimately gave the greater weight to the defense, who offered 50 mitigating circumstances to consider for a life sentence. The death penalty required a unanimous verdict, otherwise the capital-murder sentence was automatic life.
Vance, who didn’t testify at trial, didn’t take the stand during the two-day sentencing hearing. But the defense team called 15 witnesses including his mother, Jacqueline Burnett. She took the stand to tell jurors that she’d been a drug-addicted sometimes-prostitute who had beat her son unconscious when he was 6 years old, an attack defense experts said had likely left Vance brain-damaged. Burnett told jurors she’d taken her three sons’ Social Security benefits to buy crack, and described how she abandoned her youngest daughter to be raised by a Memphis pastor.
She declined comment after the trial, but called out, “We love you, Lavelle.”
Vance’s girlfriend, brother and sister testified, describing him as a protective older brother and perfect, loving father.
Jurors rejected outright defense claims that Vance got no emotional or financial support from his mother and arguments that his brain doesn’t function normally. But they did find that 35 of the defense’s mitigating circumstances existed, including that Burnett, 46, had been violent toward her son and abandoned him for long stretches of time while she was using drugs. Jurors also found that Vance had been a loving father, a supportive, protective and encouraging older brother who has tried to provide for his children.
Jegley told jurors in his closing arguments before the sentencing that Vance killed Pressly to cover his tracks.
“Remember ... she tried to shield herself - he knew she could identify him so he killed her,” he said.
The “cruel” death warranted the ultimate punishment, Jegley said, saying the attack amounted to torture.
“In the sanctity of her home, the comfort and security of her bed, Anne Pressly awoke to savagery,” he said. “She tried - in his words - to defend herself by “wiggling away” from him. As he put ‘his weight on her weight’ - his words - she didn't know what her fate would be.”
Jegley reminded jurors of the autopsy photographs of Pressly they'd seen and the medical testimony about her broken bones.
“You heard how this man destroyed a woman's face,” he said.
In her closing argument, defense attorney Katherine Streett told jurors she couldn't challenge the circumstances of Pressly’s death or the Marianna rape allegations. But she said prosecutors had shown them no proof that her client killed Pressly while burglarizing her home or that he fatally beat her to avoid arrest. Jurors could punish Vance without killing him, she said. Execution would not balance the loss of Pressly’s life, she said.
“Patti Cannady said from the witness stand that her daughter’s life counts, and it does. She should not have died. No one has the right to murder,” Streett told jurors. “But the question for you is, what do you do about it? You can’t fix it. The only way to fix it is to bring her daughter back to life. The law doesn't require that you fix it. If putting Curtis Vance to death would bring Anne Pressly back, who could tell you not to?”
The jurors’ duty is to figure out how to punish Vance, Streett said.
“How can you do that? You can kill him,” she said. “Do you have to put him to death to punish him?”
Jurors should consider the circumstances of his life not as an excuse for what he's done, but as a reason “for how we got here, where this [crime] came from.” Vance “was a tragedy waiting to happen,” she said. One that might have been prevented if he'd been raised by a mother who cared about her son half as much as Cannady cared about her daughter, Streett told jurors. She asked jurors to reject outside pressure.
“I think we all know what the community expects. There are some people who think this is a foregone conclusion. But it takes courage to ... do the hard thing and this is a time for courage,” she said. “The decision you’re about to make may speak as much about you as it does about Anne Pressly.”
In his rebuttal, Jegley also urged jurors to embrace courage and reject any pressure to make a decision not based in the law and evidence. But he urged them not to pity Vance, whose life was “an American tragedy,” but to see him as a man who made his own choices. Vance’s younger brother overcame similar circumstances, the prosecutor said.
“You heard Curtis Vance,” Jegley said. “He made choices over and over and over. He made the choice to be a burglar and thief - to feed off the hard work and efforts of others. He chose it because it was what he wanted to do.”
Jurors could see the kind of man Vance is by the choice he made in attacking Pressly, the prosecutor said. Vance told police he’d stolen her laptop and her purse then left her house. Vance could’ve left Pressly alone, Jegley said.
“Curtis Vance chose to be a scavenger and prowl the dark alleys. He didn’t have to choose to become a predator. He became one when he attacked and killed Anne Pressly,” the prosecutor told jurors. “He ... could’ve chosen to disappear back into the darkness. He chose to be the predator and that’s why we’re here. Curtis Vance had the opportunity to leave but he didn’t. He chose to pickup a weapon. He made the choice and he should be accountable.”
Jegley also encouraged jurors not to spare Vance out of sympathy for the defendant’s family, saying they are also the victim of his bad choices.
Their tears are the result of his choices and his disregard for them,” he said. “It is because of him there was so much damage and he should pay ... for his terribly sick crime.”
Vance still has to stand trial in the April 2008 attack on Edwards. Charged with rape, aggravated robbery and theft, he faces the possibility of two more life sentences.
Information for this report was contributed by Jacob Quinn Sanders of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 11/13/2009