JOSHUA WOLFSON Star-Tribune staff writer | Posted: Sunday, February 10, 2008 12:00 am
Intensely stressful. Overwhelming. Simply miserable.
The attorneys who've litigated death penalty cases in Wyoming don't mince words when describing the experience. Fighting for the ultimate punishment, or fighting to prevent it, is an emotionally taxing business that sticks with the participants long after the outcome has been decided.
"The responsibility is just so overwhelming," said veteran public defender Wyatt Skaggs, who's represented clients in four capital cases. "If you make an error, you are not talking about a year or two in jail. You are talking about a man's life."
Last Monday, prosecutors in Natrona County disclosed their plans to seek the death penalty against Donald Rolle, a Casper man accused of murdering Jennifer Randel, a woman he'd dated and been convicted of assaulting in the past.
If the experience of others is any indication, the participants in the Rolle case can expect a long, difficult process.
"I think it is the hardest thing a lawyer or a judge will ever have to do," said Fremont County Attorney Ed Newell, who's sought the death penalty against two defendants. "Nobody takes these cases lightly.
"I found it incredibly stressful," he continued. "You get greatly invested in it on a personal level."
It's an experience that relatively few attorneys, jurors and defendants go through. Only two men are on death row in Wyoming, and only one has been executed in the past 20 years.
Attorneys who've litigated capital cases say they differ from other trials - even murder trials where defendants face life behind bars.
"I don't know if anybody is so callous and indifferent that they don't spend many, many nights tossing and turning, trying to make sure they do the right thing," Newell said.
It's also a difficult experience for the judges charged with ensuring the trials proceed fairly and according to the law.
Former Wyoming District Judge Robert Ranck pronounced the death sentence for Mark Hopkinson, the last person executed in Wyoming. Hopkinson was executed by lethal injection in 1992 - 13 years after his trial.
Hopkinson was executed after being found responsible for ordering four killings in the 1970s.
"Every little part of it, when you are dealing with someone's life, is serious business," said Ranck, who retired from the bench in 1989.
Capital cases, the judge said, are more difficult, more intense and more demanding.
"Before you ever walk in a courtroom, you are under stress with a death penalty case," he said.
Slow process
Death penalty cases proceed slower than a typical criminal case.
Just getting to trial can be time consuming. In a regular criminal proceeding, attorneys might file a handful of motions. In a capital case, they sometimes file more than 100.
Jury selection also takes longer. It might take a morning to seat a jury in murder cases that don't involve the death penalty. It took more than a week to seat a jury for the 2004 trial of Dale Wayne Eaton, the last defendant in a capital murder trial in Natrona County.
It's also grueling process for jurors, who normally have little experience with the legal system.
"You put a man's life before 12 ordinary citizens, who in their daily lives have nothing to do with the legal system, and you call upon them to make what's probably the most important decision of their lives," Newell said. "It's something they find incredibly difficult."
The trials themselves are typically longer than normal. Prosecutors may be inclined to present more proof than usual for jurors who are literally grappling with issues of life and death. Defense attorneys, meanwhile, focus not just on the facts of the case. During the sentencing phase, they walk jurors down the path the accused took to get to the courtroom, according to Skaggs.
"It requires a different sort of foresight and direction," he said.
The manpower required for a death penalty case is considerable. Keith Goody, who represented James Harlow, one of Wyoming's two inmates now on death row, estimates a lawyer can spend more than 1,800 hours on a death penalty case.
"If you look at that, that's a year's worth of one lawyer's time," he said.
Goody called working a death penalty case "miserable," but laid out multiple reasons for why he's done them.
"For a constitutional scholar, there is nothing like those cases because they are filled with constitutional issues," he said. "Secondly, criminal defense lawyers are there for a reason and somebody has to do (the cases)."
You never forget death penalty cases, Skaggs said. The public might think the cases should be relatively short, with few appeals, just like a typical case. But death is different.
"In the end, the emotional load is the thing that sticks with you, and it sticks with you every single day and afterward," said Skaggs, who's a few weeks from retirement. "I never forget cases that are that way."
Reach Joshua Wolfson at (307) 266-0582 or at josh.wolfson@trib.com.
The death penalty in Wyoming
In Wyoming, death penalty trials have two phases. First, the jury must decide whether the defendant is guilty of the crime he is accused of. Then, if they convict him, they must decide whether to impose the death penalty.
All 12 jurors must agree that death is warranted. In 1999, a single Natrona County juror spared the life of Justin Sincock, who had been convicted of first-degree murder.
Death penalty convictions are automatically appealed to the Wyoming Supreme Court.
Wyoming death row
Wyoming currently has two people on death row:
- Dale Wayne Eaton, convicted of the 1988 kidnapping, rape and murder of 18-year-old Lisa Marie Kimmell. He was sentenced in 2004 in Natrona County.
- James Martin Harlow, convicted of murdering Cpl. Wayne Martinez, a prison guard, in 1997. He was sentenced in 1998 in Sweetwater County.