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| Supreme Court Weighs Kentucky Man’s Death Sentence |
| By vnews.com - Michael Doyle |
| Published: 12/12/2013 |
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Robert Keith Woodall killed 16-year-old Sarah Hansen in Greenville, Ky. He raped her, slit her throat and dragged her off to drown in a nearby lake. Now, nearly 17 years after a crime for which he pled guilty, Woodall is hoping the U.S. Supreme Court will help spare his life. Other fates, too, could turn on how the court handles a convicted man’s silence. On Wednesday, with Woodall far away on Kentucky’s death row, justices wrangled over an important legal question that his case presents. Defense attorneys say the initial trial judge acted improperly by not instructing the jurors deciding on Woodall’s sentence that they should not consider his refusal to testify on his own behalf during the sentencing hearing. “They’re going to hold his failure to testify against him,” attorney Laurence E. Komp told the court Wednesday. “That’s the natural inclination of what jurors do.” If Woodall wins, it could mean judges would be required, at a defendant’s request, to instruct jurors to disregard the defendant’s silence during sentencing. Attorneys call this a “no-adverse-inference” instruction, similar to what is already required during the guilt phase of a trial. But from a court with a generally conservative majority, a Woodall victory seems unlikely. “You have an incredibly heinous crime,” noted Justice Samuel Alito Jr., a former federal prosecutor. Read More. |
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