Court Opinion

ID: 9736182
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 18:46:31.391993+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:27:04.917171
License: Public Domain

MR. JUSTICE UNDERWOOD, concurring in part and dissenting in part: I agree that the murder convictions should be affirmed. I cannot agree that the death sentence should be vacated. In view of the inconsistencies between defendant’s statements at the time of his arrest and his trial testimony, coupled with his failure to mention to the police in his original statement the compulsion to which he later testified, the jury may well have regarded as a total fabrication his testimony that he was compelled by Parsons to shoot the two boys. We can never know the precise reasons for the jury’s verdict, but it seems not unreasonable that it was, in part at least, influenced by the belief that defendant lied. Absent any compulsion, defendant’s callous and brutal action in shooting each of the boys twice in the back of the head with a shotgun at close range seems to me to eliminate any problem of disproportionality. I would affirm the death sentence. MR. JUSTICE WARD joins in this partial concurrence and partial dissent.