Opinion ID: 6536853
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Facts and Severity of Fry's and Allen's Cases

Text: {157} It is essential to begin with the facts of Fry's and Allen's crimes because proportionality review is first and foremost directed to the particular circumstances of a crime and the specific character of the defendant. Garcia , 1983-NMSC-008 , ¶ 40, 99 N.M. 771 , 664 P.2d 969 . It is also settled law that the question whether any given death sentence is comparatively disproportionate cannot be assessed unless and until all of the facts that  gave rise to the sentence-the baseline for comparison-are thoroughly understood. State v. Addison , 160 N.H. 732 , 7 A.3d 1225 , 1253 (N.H. 2010) ; State v. Guzman , 1984-NMSC-016 , ¶ 33, 100 N.M. 756 , 676 P.2d 1321 . This requires scrutiny of the entire record including the aggravating and mitigating circumstances presented to the capital-sentencing jury. See Addison , 7 A.3d at 1253 ; State v. Wyrostek , 1994-NMSC-042 , ¶ 12, 117 N.M. 514 , 873 P.2d 260 .
{158} On the night of June 8, 2000, Fry bragged to companions that he was wearing an eight-inch bowie knife and intended to stick someone. Fry encountered Betty Lee, a woman in her thirties and a mother of five, by pure chance at a convenience store at approximately 2:00 a.m. on June 9, 2000. Fry and Betty had never met before. {159} Betty was using a pay phone, was emotionally distraught, and stranded. Fry was driving a vehicle and was accompanied by one male companion, Leslie Engh. Fry offered Betty a ride home, and she accepted. {160} Fry drove away from the store with Betty and Engh and turned off the paved roadway and onto a dirt road that led out into the desert. Fry claimed that he needed to urinate and drove a pretty good distance away from the paved road. Betty sensed something was not right, and when Fry stopped the car, exited, and began urinating, she also exited the vehicle and began walking back towards the paved road. Fry reentered his vehicle, drove alongside Betty, and coaxed her back in. {161} After Betty reentered the car, Fry drove some distance further, then stopped, and dragged Betty out of the car by her hair. A struggle ensued and Fry summoned Engh to hold Betty's legs, which Engh did. Fry then attempted to take off Betty's shirt, but she kicked him. Fry drew his bowie knife and slammed it into Betty's chest. The knife traveled two inches into Betty and penetrated her breast bone and heart sac. She fell to the ground and Fry and Engh attempted to pull off her pants. As they did this, Betty yelled at the men why are you doing this to me? She then removed the knife from her chest, threw it into a ravine, broke free, got to her feet, and started running. {162} As she ran, Betty screamed loudly at a high pitch. Her shirt was around her neck and her chest exposed. Fry chased her, caught her, and then the two men succeeded in pulling off her pants. After they disrobed her, Betty once more broke free and again started running. At this point, she was completely naked. {163} Fry instructed Engh to find the knife and Fry obtained a sledgehammer from the car. As Engh searched in bushes with a flashlight for the knife, he saw Fry swinging the sledgehammer in the distance. Betty's screaming came to an end. {164} Fry struck Betty on the head three to five times with the sledgehammer. The wounds the blows inflicted indicated that Betty had been facedown on the ground when she was struck. Her scalp was torn, her skull split, and her brain lacerated. These blows, in conjunction with the stab wound, caused her death. {165} After Fry killed Betty, Fry and Engh dragged her corpse by its wrists to some bushes by a ravine, an area where they believed it would not be discovered. Engh did not want to look at the corpse but did and saw that the face was covered in blood and the hair was in all sorts of different funny directions. They kicked Betty's clothes off towards the edge of the ravine so that they too would not be discovered. {166} Fry and Engh drove away from the scene of the murder, but their car became stuck in a wash. Fry contacted his parents on his cell phone. It was nearly 4:00 a.m. Fry's parents, oblivious to what Fry and Engh had just done, met the men at the paved roadway. {167} Betty's corpse was discovered by a lineman later that morning. When questioned by the police, Fry denied any involvement in the killing. He did not testify at trial. The evidence presented to Fry's jury overwhelmingly demonstrated that Fry had killed Betty. Engh testified as a witness for the State and provided the testimony that serves as  the principal foundation for the narrative produced above. {168} After Fry's jury returned a guilty verdict, several of Betty's siblings and children offered victim impact testimony at the sentencing phase of the proceedings. The general thrust of that testimony was that Betty had been a kind and generous woman, that Betty's family was greatly distressed by the thought of the terror she experienced at the time of her death, and that the family's grieving and loss was profound. The sole aggravating circumstance found by the jury was that Fry perpetrated his murder in the course of a kidnapping. State v. Fry , 2006-NMSC-001 , ¶ 6, 138 N.M. 700 , 126 P.3d 516 . {169} Four witnesses presented mitigating evidence for Fry. Id. ¶ 46. A psychologist stated that it was unlikely Fry would engage in additional violence in prison. A pastor stated his belief that Fry had grown spiritually since being incarcerated. Fry's mother and father indicated a desire to continue knowing their son and spoke of his interests and community involvement. The trial judge informed the jury that, if Fry received a prison sentence for his crimes, he would be imprisoned for a minimum of sixty-seven years.
{170} On February 7, 1994, Allen happened to encounter Sandra Phillips as Sandra walked through Flora Vista, New Mexico to complete an errand and apply for a job at a local restaurant. State v. Allen , 2000-NMSC-002 , ¶ 2, 128 N.M. 482 , 994 P.2d 728 . They did not know each other. At that time, Sandra was seventeen years old and had just moved home to live with her mother. Allen thought Sandra was cute and good looking, and he liked her red hair. Allen and Sandra spoke and then, for reasons unknown, Sandra entered Allen's truck. {171} Allen drove Sandra out into the hills because he wanted to make love to her. He tied a rope around Sandra's neck so he could control her while he made love to her. Initially, the rope was wrapped around Sandra's neck three times and then knotted. Allen tightened the rope to a point that it cut off the blood supply to Sandra's brain. Sandra struggled with Allen for about thirty seconds as he attempted to rape her, but she lost consciousness and went limp. Allen pulled Sandra's blouse over her chest, removed Sandra's left boot, and then removed Sandra's left leg from her pants and underwear. Even though Sandra was unconscious, she was still breathing. Allen wrapped the rope around her neck a fourth time and again knotted it. Sandra died one to two minutes after losing consciousness. She was slowly strangled to death. In the course of the struggle, Allen sustained a facial scratch and a bruised lip. Id. ¶ 5. {172} After murdering Sandra, Allen put her half-naked corpse in a ditch three-and-one-half miles from Flora Vista. Id. ¶ 3. The evidence indicated that the killing occurred somewhere other than where the body was discovered. Id. ¶ 7. Allen cleaned his truck to eliminate any evidence of the murder. Sandra's corpse remained in the ditch until it was discovered by a shepherd six weeks later. Id. ¶ 3. The jury was shown sixteen photographs of Sandra's half-naked, decaying corpse. {173} When the police informed Allen that they suspected he killed Sandra, Allen informed them that the perpetrator was, in fact, a man named David Anderson from Jemez Springs. Yet, Allen told his wife and others that he raped and then killed Sandra in order to prevent her from reporting the rape and expressed to others that he thought he would not be convicted for the crime. {174} At the sentencing phase, the jury learned that Allen had taken measures to silence other women he had victimized. The jury was informed that, in the 1980s, Allen stole money from a woman and, when she confronted him about the theft, he grabbed her by the throat, pushed her against a wall, and threatened to kill her if she reported the incident to the police. Allen was imprisoned for this conduct. Id. ¶ 80. This testimony in conjunction with Allen's statements to his wife and others that he raped Sandra and then killed her to prevent her from reporting the rape formed the basis for the jury's finding that Allen killed Sandra with the aggravating circumstance that he murdered  to silence a witness. Id. ¶¶ 79 -80. At the sentencing hearing, Sandra's mother and a family friend testified, and a short video of Sandra on a camping trip was played for the jury. Id. ¶¶ 56 -58. This evidence was, by all accounts, particularly forceful and established that Allen's actions irreparably wounded Sandra's family and friends. See id. at ¶ 145 (Franchini, J., partial concurrence and partial dissent). {175} Allen also spoke to the jury at sentencing. Id. ¶ 82. He offered mitigating evidence on his own behalf, the only mitigating evidence presented. Id. He sobbed, cried, and told the jury he was sorry for the pain he had caused.