2015/05/06 – The state is seeking a stay of a federal judge’s ruling ordering Mississippi to grant its only female death row inmate a new trial within 120 days or release her from custody.

The state is seeking a stay of a federal judge’s ruling ordering Mississippi to grant its only female death row inmate a new trial within 120 days or release her from custody.

On the last day of March, U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves ordered the state to grant Lisa Jo Chamberlin a new trial within in four months, saying prosecutors intentionally struck seven black potential jurors from her capital murder trial.

What’s interesting is that Chamberlin is white. She argued on appeal that her rights were violated by prosecutors striking some blacks as potential jurors for non-racial neutral reasons.

Chamberlin and her boyfriend, Roger Lee Gillett, were convicted of two counts of capital murder in the March 2004 slayings of Gillet’s cousin, Vernon Hulett, 34, and Hulett’s girlfriend, Linda Heintzelman, 37, in Hattiesburg and transporting their bodies to Kansas in a freezer.

Gillett and Chamberlin were arrested March 29, 2004, after Kansas Bureau of Investigation agents raided an abandoned farm house near Russell, Kansas, owned by Gillett’s father, and found the dismembered bodies of Hulett and Heintzelman in a freezer.

KBI agents were investigating Gillett and Chamberlin for their possible connection to the manufacture of methamphetamine, according to published reports.

Gillett and Chamberlin were living with Hulett and Heintzelman in Hattiesburg at the time of the slayings.

Chamberlin, in a taped confession played at her trial, said the victims were killed because they wouldn’t open a safe in Hulett’s home.

Chamberlain was sentenced to death row in 2006 and Gillett was sentenced in 2007.

Last year, Gillett’s death sentence was overturned by the Mississippi Supreme Court. While in custody in Kansas, Gillett attempted to escape. That crime was one of the aggravating factors prosecutors presented jurors to support the death penalty.

In a 6-3 decision, the state Supreme Court said not every escape is considered a crime of violence under Kansas law. Therefore, the Kansas crime cannot be used to support a death sentence in Mississippi, the court ruled.

Chamberlin filed a post-conviction challenge to her conviction in 2011 in U.S. District Court after the state Supreme Court upheld her conviction and death sentence.

One of claims was that the prosecution improperly struck seven blacks from serving on her jury. The prosecutor said he struck seven blacks and five whites. He denied any effort to strike potential jurors based upon race.

Reeves said federal law requires in death penalty cases that comparative analysis be done when black potential jurors are struck compared to white jurors allowed to remain in the jury pool.

“Some may wonder why constitutional error in the jury’s selection necessitates a new trial,

especially given the horrific murders committed in this case,” Reeves said in his court order. “But the Supreme Court has many times explained that a discriminatory jury selection process unforgivably taints a guilty verdict.

Discrimination in picking a jury “causes harm to the litigants, the community, and the individual jurors who are wrongfully excluded from participation in the judicial process.”

Attorney General Jim Hood’s office has filed an appeal with the 5th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. Hood has asked Reeves to stay his order until the appeal is decided. Reeves has given Hood until May 22 to file court briefs supporting his position for staying the order.

Source: The Clarion-Ledger

Jimmie E. Gates