"Wichita Massacre" murder trial "Ping List"Please let me know if you want on (or off) this list.
Posted on 11/14/2002 5:20:53 AM PST by KS Flyover
Today, Reginald Carr Jr. will spend his 25th birthday waiting for a jury to decide whether he and his younger brother, Jonathan, should die for the murders of four people.As part of the penalty phase of the brothers' trial, jurors heard testimony from witnesses, which lasted a week, followed by Wednesday's closing arguments. The jury decided to begin sentencing deliberations this morning.
Sedgwick County District Attorney Nola Foulston spoke softly and deliberately as she began her closing for the jury. But her voice rose, cracked and filled with emotion as she talked about the robbery and rape of five people, who were then taken to a soccer field and shot on Dec. 15, 2000. Four of the victims died; one survived to testify against the Carrs. The brothers were also convicted of first-degree murder in the death of Ann Walenta, who was shot in a carjacking attempt and later died of her injuries.
Foulston then picked up a photograph of the Carrs as young boys, taken before family members say a pattern of abuse and neglect began in the household.
"These boys are gone. They don't exist anymore," Foulston said. "They grew up into adults who didn't just lose their moral compass, they threw it away."
"Reggie's moral compass wasn't thrown away by him; it was taken away from him," countered Jay Greeno, Reginald Carr's lawyer.
Most of the testimony from both brothers' defense during the penalty phase has focused on the abuse and neglect Reginald and Jonathan Carr endured while growing up. Psychologists said the brothers developed sociopathic tendencies that prevented them from caring for, or empathizing with or about others.
"We didn't come in here making excuses for this guy," Greeno said. "We came in here to explain what it was like to grow up being Reginald Carr."
"I'm not in the excuse business up here," echoed Ron Evans, Jonathan Carr's lawyer. "This is not about excuses, this phase. This is about whether he deserves the ultimate punishment."
Foulston at times mocked the defense's strategy, that childhood trauma caused lives of crime that ended with the killings near 29th Street North and Greenwich Road.
"'Golly gee willikers, look at our childhood,"' Foulston mocked. "'Look at our brains -- they're damaged.'
"But they're not damaged."
Foulston instead urged jurors to consider that morning's testimony from Wichita neuroradiologist Norman Pay. He disagreed with nuclear medicine specialist David Preston's opinion that scans of the Carrs' brains showed damage. Pay added under cross-examination that, unlike Preston, he didn't normally evaluate such scans.
Foulston used Pay's testimony to call Preston's analysis "hocus-pocus."
"It's a sham," Foulston said of the claims of childhood trauma and brain injury.
In her summation, Kim Parker -- Foulston's chief deputy -- called the abuse allegations "an insult to children who wish they had a roof over their head; it's an insult to children who are starving the world over, that it gives them the license to kill."
Evans said the testimony wasn't about sympathy for Jonathan Carr.
"Should you feel sorry for him? I don't care whether you do or not," Evans said. "Is it something you should consider before you impose the ultimate penalty? I think so."
When prosecutors weren't trying to discredit defense experts, they were using the same testimony to support their request for the death penalty.
"They have the capacity to choose right from wrong," Parker said of the brothers. "They could have chosen the right path. They did not. They chose the path of evil."
A recent Kansas Supreme Court decision on the state's death penalty law, which has yet to be carried out since being reinstated in 1994, allows the jury to consider what the non-death sentence would be. If the Carrs aren't sentenced to die, they would face life sentences with a minimum of 50 years to a maximum of 268 years before being eligible for parole.
Greeno pointed to Val Wachtel, his 57-year-old, silver-haired co-counsel.
"By the time Reginald Carr even gets to see a parole board, if he gets the very minimum sentence, his oldest son will be older than Val Wachtel," Greeno said.
There will be no hung jury at this stage. It takes a unanimous decision to impose death.
"You know, any one of you could decide to save this young man's life," Evans said. "You don't have that opportunity very often in this life to save another life."
Foulston said the Carrs should have given equal consideration to the people who knelt in the snow before being shot in the back of the head.
"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I ask you to show Jonathan and Reginald Carr the same mercy they showed to Jason Befort, Heather Muller, Brad Heyka and Aaron Sander," Foulston said. "No mercy."
Wichita Massacre Trial Threads:
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Deputy recalls moment of discovering bodies [Wichita Murders] Day 1 - 10/07/02
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Carr trial: Survivor describes sexual attacks by armed intruders [Wichita Massacre] Day 2 - 10/09/02
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Woman testifies that Carrs killed her friends in a soccer field [Wichita Massacre Day 3] - 10/10/02
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"Wichita Massacre" murder trial "Ping List"Please let me know if you want on (or off) this list.
The lawyers have done a good job of muddying the water and jurys are not that bright.
Both should be put down but I don't think it will happen... IMHO.
OK..I've considered it..
DEATH!!
Brain scans of the people they shot in the head would show a hell of a lot more damage.
http://www.cjonline.com/stories/111402/kan_carr.shtmlDeath penalty deliberations begin today in murder trial
By Roxana Hegeman - The Associated Press - 11/14/2002WICHITA -- Jurors will begin deliberations today on whether to recommend two brothers convicted of killing five people, including four shot execution style in a snow-covered soccer field, be put to death.
In their closing arguments Wednesday, defense attorneys said just one juror can decide to show Reginald and Jonathan Carr mercy and spare their lives. Should they not receive a death sentence, the brothers would spend at least 50 years in prison if given the minimum possible sentence for their crimes, the attorneys said.
"Any one of you can decide to save this young man's life," said Ron Evans, Jonathan Carr's attorney. "You can decide there is some good there. There is something worth saving. You don't have an opportunity to do that very often in this life -- to save another life. Our instinct is to preserve life -- it is there in all of us."
Jay Greeno, the attorney for Reginald Carr, said his client will be 25 today and is the product of an abusive household.
"This crime had to be committed by a damaged individual or individuals," Greeno said. "We just don't grow up that way."
Jurors convicted the brothers for the Dec. 15, 2000, deaths of Aaron Sander, 29, Brad Heyka, 27, Jason Befort, 26, and Heather Muller, 25. All four were shot execution style in the back of the head as they knelt side-by-side in the field. They also were convicted of first-degree murder for the shooting of another woman, Ann Walenta, four days before the quadruple murder.
Prosecutors urged jurors to show the brothers the same mercy they showed the four killed in the field.
"What murder would warrant the death penalty, if it is not this? It defies reason to think torturous slaughter of these four young people who gave no fight," said Deputy District Attorney Kim Parker. "They submitted hoping for life, and they got death. You cannot bring these young people back, but you can you can go back and deliver a just and legal punishment."
The brothers also were convicted of attempted first-degree murder of Befort's girlfriend, then a 25-year-old teacher, who also was shot in the head but survived, as well as forcing the five friends to engage in sex acts with each other and repeatedly raping the women.
District Attorney Nola Foulston told jurors in her closing arguments the brothers were convicted of 23 sex crimes. She said the victims were made to suffer as no one should suffer and were humiliated before they died.
"That crime made their lives end in the most gruesome and vile way," Foulston said. "It made their lives end after degrading them."
Greeno told jurors that Reginald Carr should be locked up forever. But he said jurors also should think about the effect his execution would have on Carr's three young children.
"If you execute Reginald Carr, you create a whole new set of victims," Greeno said.
Evans urged jurors to remember Jonathan Carr is only 22 and had no serious criminal record prior to these offenses.
"There is good in this young man," Evans said. "He is not a monster. He behaved monstrously that night."
Also on Wednesday, a radiologist testified that brain scans prepared for the Carr's defense showing alleged brain damage had been manipulated and the results skewed.
Dr. Norman Pay said his analysis showed the brothers both had normal brains. He testified for the state as a rebuttal witness in the penalty phase of the capital murder trial.
David Preston, a retired doctor and former professor at The University of Kansas Medical Center, appeared for the defense last week and testified the brain scans showed problems in the part of the brain that handles short-term memory and assigns risk to situations.
But Pay said his analysis shows the color-coded scans prepared for jurors had been skewed. Pay also said the scans weren't in the proper anatomical location, but tilted in such a way that it showed a diminished area of the brain.
Just a thought!
As always, please remember to say a prayer for the victims and their families.
I agree. And he does. He committed the ultimate crime.
It's only too bad each of them can't be executed five times over.
Posted on Thu, Nov. 14, 2002WHAT THE JURY WILL DECIDE
Jurors will have three verdict forms to choose from for each brother on the four capital murders of which they convicted Jonathan and Reginald Carr last week.The possible verdicts:
A unanimous finding that death is the appropriate sentence.
That the state failed to prove aggravating circumstances required for the death penalty. The Carrs would then be sentenced to prison by Judge Paul Clark.
That they can't agree on a death sentence, leaving Clark to impose prison sentences.
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