A petition by a death row prisoner to have his case returned to Pulaski County Circuit Court was denied Thursday by the Arkansas Supreme Court, which stated in documents that the additional evidence at issue wouldn't have resulted in a different trial outcome.
Timothy Wayne Kemp applied last year to have his case returned to the trial court. The request, written by Assistant Federal Public Defender Julie Vandiver, stated that evidence was withheld from Kemp and only released upon federal court order. The petition said the evidence corroborated Kemp's claim that he was threatened with a gun before shooting his own weapon.
Vandiver argued that the jurors in Kemp's case sentenced him to death after the state convinced them he killed four people in a rage induced by a lover's quarrel.
She said the jury never heard the evidence -- which she contended showed Kemp reacted to armed threats -- because the prosecutors suppressed it.
If jurors heard this evidence, Vandiver said, they likely would not have convicted Kemp of capital murder or, at the very least, not sentenced him to death.
The Arkansas Supreme Court on Thursday declined Kemp's request to reinvest jurisdiction in the circuit court under the writ of error coram nobis -- that is, a request to return to the lower court to present evidence that was omitted in the original trial. The high court heard oral arguments in the matter Sept 12.
"Contrary to Kemp's view, there is no reasonable probability that disclosure of the evidence to the defense would have resulted in a different outcome. As a result, the proposed attack on judgment is wholly without merit," the high court stated in its ruling.
In 1993, police found the bodies of David Wayne Helton, Robert "Sonny" Phegley, Cheryl Phegley and Richard "Bubba" Falls in a Jacksonville mobile home. All four were shot, all but Falls more than once. A surviving victim, Becky Mahoney, was shot but hid in a bedroom closet.
Mahoney later identified her boyfriend, Kemp, as the killer.
In 1994, Kemp was convicted of four counts of capital murder and sentenced to death on each count. The Arkansas Supreme Court in 1996 overturned three of the death sentences, but Kemp was resentenced to death in 1997.
Kemp filed multiple claims in state and federal courts that were dismissed, but according to Vandiver, during a federal hearing, Kemp received never-before-disclosed parts of the prosecutor's file that could have changed the outcome of the case.
Vandiver said the prosecutor's story that Kemp murdered people in cold blood in response to a fight with his girlfriend was only possible through the suppression of evidence. She said the prosecutor hid evidence that supported Kemp's claim that the victims pulled a gun on him first.
Vandiver said Kemp raises four meritorious claims: that Helton had a gun and planned to use it to scare Kemp; a rifle was removed from the crime scene; Mahoney, assisted by the prosecution, received emergency psychiatric treatment during the trial; and the prosecution suppressed evidence that would have impeached witness Bill Stuckey, who wasn't present at the scene of the crime but talked to Kemp afterward.
The Arkansas Supreme Court ruled that the outcome of the trial would not have been changed because of the alleged failure of the prosecution to disclose that Helton, one of the victims, showed Mahoney "a pistol and told her that he planned to use it to scare Kemp should he return" after he left the mobile home.
The second claim was denied due to the fact that even if a rifle was somewhere in the trailer, there was no evidence to support the claim that it was present during the crime or used to threaten Kemp at any time.
The court also stated that the evidence of Mahoney's trauma would have actually been helpful to the state's victim impact case and if the records had been used to cast doubt on her, there was no reasonable chance that the records would have resulted in a different outcome given the overwhelming evidence of guilt.
Lastly, the court stated the disclosure of the collateral details surrounding Stuckey's criminal convictions would not have created a reasonable probability that the jury would have reached a different conclusion during the resentencing trial.