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Carr brothers? death appeal coming in June

By Ron Sylvester

It’s been nearly six years since a jury said Reginald and Jonathan Carr should die for the torturing and killing of four people in Wichita during a weeklong crime spree in December of 2000.

The Supreme Court should begin receiving the Carrs’ appeals by June. That’s when Jonathan Carr’s lawyer said she plans to file his appeal. His brother, Reginald Carr, has an even earlier deadline.

“This is very comparable to what we’ve had in other cases,” said Rebecca Woodman, who will represent Jonathan Carr’s appeal, on the length of time taken to file the legal papers.

The Kansas Supreme Court has extended the filing deadline for Reginald Carr 23 times, 19 for Jonathan.

“Yes, this last extension in Carr is the last,” Woodman said.

The time includes two years — from 2004 to 2006 — when all death penalty cases were put on hold, after the state’s highest court struck down the death penalty and the 1997 capital murder convictions of Michael Marsh. Marsh’s case went to the U.S. Supreme Court, which eventually restored the Kansas death penalty law.

Further court battles on the capital appeal of Gavin Scott put Kansas death penalty cases on hold again from January 2007 to May of 2008.

Marsh’s case was resolved this month — 13 years after the killings — only after the prosecutors decided not to continue pursuing the death penalty. He’s serving life in prison.

But cases where the death penalty is at stake require a higher standard of legal scrutiny. As the U.S. Supreme Court has said: “death is different.”

“Non-capital murder cases … do not generally involve the type or number of constitutional issues that are present in death penalty cases,” Woodman said.

The length of time and expense is why 10 states, including Kansas, have sought to vanquish the death penalty. New Hampshire lawmakers are the latest to abolish capital punishment.

Death penalty cases not only have to pass the state’s Supreme Court but then must pass scrutiny in federal courts.

After the Carrs’ first round of arguments are filed this spring, the appeals process could last years.

No one has been executed in Kansas for 44 years.

Full post as published by What the Judge Ate for Breakfast on April 14, 2009 (boomark / email).