Posted on 08/16/2006 7:44:04 AM PDT by SmithL
It was a peek inside a killer's mind so chilling it disturbed a defense attorney assigned to the case.
Defense attorney Mack Garner found "horrifying" Aaron Lee Skeen's recounting of what went through the 20-year-old Maryville man's head as he stared at the bound University of Tennessee honor student he had just raped.
"After the rape had been accomplished and while the victim was trussed on the bed, he began to consider that he had left his DNA which I'm not sure if I would even think of that, in cold blood," Garner said. "But he thought about it."
That revelation into the mind of the man who stalked, kidnapped and raped 25-year-old Sandy Jeffers before pushing her off a cliff, leaving her to die, comes in an opinion released Monday in the state Court of Criminal Appeals.
In the opinion, drafted by Appellate Judge Thomas T. Woodall, the appellate court turned aside Skeen's bid to back out of his guilty plea for Jeffers' May 2003 slaying.
Skeen pleaded guilty to a slew of charges in connection with the haunting case, in which he stalked a woman he had never met, to avoid the death penalty. He will die in prison, however, drawing as part of his plea a sentence of life without parole plus 124 years.
Despite the guilty plea, Skeen filed an appeal arguing that Garner was a lousy lawyer who failed to push Skeen's claim that an antidepressant he used 13 days before Jeffers' death was to blame.
Garner's testimony about his handling of Skeen's defense is included in the appellate court opinion, offering a rare glimpse behind the scenes of a murder case. Garner recalls in that testimony how Skeen's own confession belied Skeen's claim that he was out of his mind when he attacked Jeffers.
"According to his statement, (Skeen) made a conscious decision, 'I have to do something to prevent capture and to remove this (DNA) evidence,'?" Garner recalled. "So, again, according to his statement, he turned - I've forgot - the television or the radio or something there that was on so there would be a loud noise going on so that no one could hear.
"He went some distance to where he had parked his car," Garner is quoted as saying in the opinion. "He drove the car up to the door so that the victim would not be going a long distance in front of possible public gaze. He put her in the car and then took her up to the mountains where, again, in his statement, he planned murdering her for some period of time until the DNA would have dissipated to where no test could be found.
"I found that to be the thought process of a very competent, rational, if cold, decision-maker who knew exactly what he was doing and why he was doing it," Garner concluded.
The appellate court agreed, rejecting Skeen's claims that Garner was wrong not to submit Skeen to a psychological evaluation.
"The decision not to conduct a psychological evaluation was a strategic, tactical decision, made by (Garner) in an effort to avoid a death sentence," the opinion stated. "By his own testimony, (Skeen) agreed with his counsel's decision and felt it was in his best interest to forego an evaluation and accept the state's offer. Such a strategic decision will not be second-guessed by this court."
Skeen had stalked Jeffers for weeks, sneaking inside her Blount County apartment repeatedly and stealing items including underwear, authorities have said.
On May 6, 2003, Skeen broke into Jeffers' apartment while she was asleep, put "several layers of duct tape" over her eyes and bound her hands behind her back, the appellate court opinion stated.
He repeatedly raped her and then took the UT student, still bound, to Look Rock, where he pushed her from a 63-foot high cliff. Her body was found three days later.
"Autopsy results would show that Sandy Jeffers did not die instantly from these injuries," Woodall wrote.
This pig should be hung by his private parts..I am so tired of this kind of scum walking among civil people..and they are all around us..
Skin him & roll him in salt
Push him off a cliff and then leave him to die. That would be "proportionate".
Only after he was raped repeatedly over the course of a couple days by a bunch of inmates. Then we can talk about proportion.
(No more Olmert! No more Kadima! No more Oslo!)
Horrific.
Crazy or not, give him the death penalty.
There is something very very wrong with our system. Taxpayers -- including the family of this victim -- are forking over what will add up to at least $3 million to keep this vicious animal caged for several decades (and of course even more $$$ to provide him with unlimited medical care to prolong his physical life as much as possible).
Indeed. I get sick and tired of these long expensive court proceedings purportedly aimed at determining whether the perp was "sane" or not. In the case of Andrea Yates, the idiotic process was repeated twice, due to a totally irrelevant technicality in the first round. A woman methodically drowns her children, one by one, with the later victims getting to experience the horror of their siblings screams as they are murdered by their mother, and we want to know if she was SANE? Duh, she was not sane, and it should have no legal effect one way or the other in a case like this. Euthanize her and get on with more important things, like locating and rescuing children living in the clutches of dangerous nuts BEFORE they get get murdered.
I agree with you..Also if we would just put the scum to death when convicted and with all the evidence proving he did this then we would have less crime with these perverts getting out of prison..and less money spent on his up keep..
What is wrong is that these vermin are allowed to plea. Not that I've thought this out, but maybe capital crimes should be tried by a jury to the bitter end. The Defendant has a right to plead guilty, and in these types of cases they plea to keep from getting an inevitable death sentence.
On the other hand, what price can we put on the fact that he's no longer murdering our daughters.
I'd like to see the whole "plea bargain" thing thrown down the sewer. It results in very minor-looking criminal records, for people who actually committed much more serious crimes. And given the rest of our screwball system, it then becomes impossible for employers or landlords to "discriminate" against them based on the crimes they actually committed, both because it would be "illegal discrimination" and because there's usually no way for the employer or landlord to even determine what the real crime. There are people walking around with "disorderly conduct" convictions who actually committed serious (sometimes sexual) assaults.
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