http://www.cjonline.com/stories/100602/kan_carr.shtml
Gruesome photos admissible, judge rules
Carrs: Arguments get under way Monday in multiple murder trial
10/5/2002
By Roxana Hegeman - The Associated Press WICHITA -- A judge ruled Friday that jurors can see gruesome crime scene and autopsy photos in the multiple murder trial of Jonathan and Reginald Carr. The brothers stood quietly behind their attorneys and looked intently at the evidence, presented Friday by prosecutors to defense attorneys and Sedgwick County District Judge Paul Clark.
The hearing was designed to give defense attorneys a chance to object.
The judge gave an hour apiece to the prosecution and each brother's defense team to present their opening arguments Monday. He told them jurors will also be allowed to take notes during the trial.
Ron Evans, attorney for 22-year-old Jonathan Carr, objected to the introduction of many crime scene and autopsy photos, saying they were gruesome. John Val Wachtel, attorney for 24-year-old Reginald Carr, joined in the objections.
The defense attorneys also wanted to exclude photos of their clients being taken into jail and what they called prejudicial photos showing the victims while they were alive. They also objected to including a photo of a dog killed the night of the attacks.
The Carrs are facing a combined 113 counts -- including capital murder, kidnapping, robbery, burglary, rape and criminal sodomy, among other crimes. Both brothers face the same 55 charges. In addition, Reginald faces three additional charges related to being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm.
Prosecutors say the crime spree began Dec. 7 when the Carrs abducted a man from a convenience store and robbed him. On Dec. 11, they are charged with repeatedly shooting 55-year-old Ann Walenta in a robbery outside her home. She later died.
The night of Dec. 14, prosecutors contend, the Carrs entered a Wichita home and abducted the five people they found inside, robbed them, forced them to perform sex on each other and raped two women before shooting them all execution-style in a soccer field early the next morning.
Four of them died, but one woman survived. In her dramatic testimony during a preliminary hearing last year, the lone survivor identified Jonathan Carr as one of their attackers but was unable to identify the other attacker.
The victim of an earlier armed robbery identified Reginald Carr as one of the two men who had robbed him days earlier. The man testified during last year's preliminary hearing that he recognized Carr after seeing a televised story about Carr's arrest for the quadruple homicides.
Prosecutors are expected to present DNA evidence, among other things, to tie the brothers to the crimes.
Defense attorneys have questioned the validity of that DNA evidence in earlier hearings.
