Opinion ID: 612544
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Mitigation Hearing

Text: The mitigation phase of trial began and ended on January 7, 2002. Three witnesses testified on Foust's behalf: Foust's father, Gary; Foust's mother, Barbara; and Karpawich. Their testimony established that Foust, who was born in 1977, was the sixth of eight children: GaryAnne, Gary Jr., Terrance, Julie, Jeremy, Kelly, Amy, and Kara. Karpawich testified that Foust's early years were marked by a lot of violence and instability, which had a traumatic effect on Kelly's upbringing. App'x Vol. 7 at 2646-47 (Karpawich Test.). In 1981, his younger sister, Kara, died of carbon monoxide poisoning from a car malfunction. Shortly afterward, Foust and his siblings were split up in foster care for over a year before being returned to their parents. At home, Foust's parents had physical fights and blamed each other for initiating the altercations. Gary testified that Barbara sometimes wanted to fight and would hit [Gary] with stuff. Id. at 2595 (Gary Test.). Gary said that [m]ost of the time he was just defending himself. Id. at 2599. He admitted that he was an alcoholic, however, and Barbara testified that Gary beat her badly. She visited emergency rooms [s]everal times to receive medical care after the fights, and she used to believe that [her] natural skin tone was black and blue. Id. at 2621 (Barbara Test.). Gary denied that the children were present during their parents' fights, but admitted that you could hear what's going on whether they see it or not. Id. at 2585 (Gary Test.). Barbara testified that her oldest daughter would sneak out of the house to a pay phone to call the police during the fights, and sometimes ... she was so little she had to stand on a chair or on telephone books to reach the phone. Id. at 2621 (Barbara Test.). As for the treatment of the children, Gary testified that he was overprotect[ive], id. at 2600 (Gary Test.), providing a controlled environment where the kids were never out of our sight, id. at 2585. When asked whether he was physically violent toward the children, Gary said Yes and no, id., and [n]ot really, id. at 2600, although he acknowledged causing a little physical, [a] little mental abuse, id. There were [t]imes when [he] was mad [and] probably hit [the children] harder than [he] should have, but [i]t wasn't an everyday thing and three to six months might pass between his drinking episodes. Id. According to Barbara, however, Gary treated the children [v]ery badly. He was very violent. He was always  if he wasn't hitting, he was screaming, he was threatening, he was ridiculing, berating them, everything they ever did wasn't good, nothing they ever did was okay. Id. at 2620-21 (Barbara Test.). She testified that Gary would kick the children and strike them with [h]is fist[ or] whatever he could pick up. Id. at 2622. Barbara said that she [o]ccasionally struck her children with only her hand to discipline the children. Id. at 2623. There was little discussion of how Barbara interacted with Foust. In comparison to his older brothers, Foust was relatively passive in the face of his father's abuse. Id. at 2646 (Karpawich Test.). Foust never seemed to respond.... [H]e would cry when he was young, but [he did not] fight back or retaliate.... Id. at 2623 (Barbara Test.). [H]e was the child that got lost in the shuffle because he never did anything bad to draw attention to himself. Id. Barbara described Foust as a straight A student until seventh grade, id., when [h]e just totally changed. It was like, the old Kelly stopped existing and someone new took over his body. Id. at 2625. Foust stopped attending school, began committing crimes, and found himself in a juvenile facility. Hardly any testimony focused on the physical condition of the Fousts' home. Gary said simply that their home wasn't well kept. Id. at 2586 (Gary Test.). There was no mention of sexual abuse. When Gary and Barbara divorced in 1985, Barbara retained custody of the children. When Barbara was arrested in 1987 or 1988, four of the children, including Foust, went to live with Gary; the rest stayed with their oldest sister, GaryAnne, who was 18. During that time, Gary pa[id] this lady $50 a week [to] t[ake] care of the kids, g[e]t them up, put them to school, [and] fe[e]d them. Id. at 2592. Because he had lost his job and was recovering from his alcohol addiction, Gary felt that there wasn't too much [he] could do to raise his children. Id. When Barbara was released from custody in 1990, Foust left Gary's home to live with Barbara. Gary never saw Foust again until the trial, in part due to a restraining order. In 1994, Terrance was shot and killed. Terrance had been Foust's role model. Shortly after Terrance's death, Foust attempted to kill himself while he was in a juvenile facility. In sum, Karpawich testified that the violence throughout [Foust's] upbringing ... has an impact on the way he would interact with other people, especially women. Id. at 2648 (Karpawich Test.). Karpawich diagnosed Foust with alcohol dependence and major depressive disorder. Id. at 2649. Karpawich testified that, when depression is mixed with alcohol[,] then someone's judgment is even more significantly impaired. Id. at 2650. During his incarceration prior to sentencing, Foust was a very appropriate prisoner who functioned well in controlled environments. Id. at 2654. After the other witnesses had testified, Foust made an unsworn statement in which he expressed confusion about his actions. Foust said that, on the night of the murder, he had a lot of unstable emotions and mixed feelings that he couldn't handle. Id. at 2666 (Foust Statement). The only thing Foust was intending when he went to the Coreanos' home was to seek one person that I thought would listen to me. Id. at 2665. He told the Coreanos that he was sorry for everything that happened. I didn't mean it. It was nothing intentional.... I lost track, I think, of myself with the reality around me. Id. at 2668. On January 11, 2002, the three-judge panel sentenced Foust to death. The panel explained why it found Foust's upbringing, as presented at the mitigation hearing, insufficient to mitigate against death: All three members of the panel were struck by the testimony of the defendant's parents, and of Dr. Karpawich, as to the circumstances of Kelly Foust's formative years: an alcoholic father verbally and physically abusing all four of his sons; frequent fights between the parents, accusations of adulterous conduct in the family home; all the children sent to foster care on one occasion for several months following the tragic accidental carbon monoxide poisoning that injured the defendant, his mother, and three older siblings, and caused the death of his two-year-old sister; his mother's imprisonment for another period of time; and finally, his parents' rancorous divorce, which led to his father's enforced estrangement from the defendant for the past ten years. This background unquestionably helped the panel place the defendant into context. Nevertheless, ultimately we could not conclude that it was sufficient to mitigate the punishment for a series of criminal acts of outrageous depravity, violence, and cruelty. App'x Vol. 2 at 486 (Op. of Trial Judges).