Missouri Judge Sentences Defendant to Death After 11 Jurors Had Voted for Life Sentence

A St. Charles County tri­al judge has sen­tenced a Missouri man to death two months after 11 of the 12 jurors in his case had vot­ed to spare his life. 

On October 6, 2017, Judge Kelly Wayne Parker dis­re­gard­ed the near-unan­i­mous vote of the jury on August 13 and imposed the death penal­ty upon for­mer Dent County deputy sher­iff and state cor­rec­tion­al offi­cer Marvin Rice (pic­tured) for mur­der­ing his ex-girl­friend, Annette Durham, dur­ing a cus­tody dis­pute over their son. The judge also sen­tenced Rice to life for killing Durham’s boyfriend, Steven Strotkamp, for­mal­ly impos­ing the sen­tence unan­i­mous­ly agreed to by jurors when they con­vict­ed him of sec­ond-degree mur­der for that killing. 

No state in the United States autho­rizes a judge to over­ride a jury’s rec­om­men­da­tion of a life sen­tence and the three states that had per­mit­ted the prac­tice have end­ed it in the past two years. In April 2017, Alabama repealed the por­tion of its death-penal­ty statute that per­mit­ted judi­cial over­ride of a jury’s life rec­om­men­da­tion. In March 2016, the Florida leg­is­la­ture repealed the judi­cial over­ride pro­vi­sions of its death-penal­ty statute. Shortly there­after, in August 2016, the Delaware Supreme Court inval­i­dat­ed its death penal­ty statute, includ­ing its judi­cial over­ride pro­vi­sions. The Court ruled that judi­cial impo­si­tion of a death sen­tence after any juror vot­ed for life vio­lat­ed the Sixth Amendment. Then in October 2016, the Florida Supreme Court held that judi­cial death sen­tences fol­low­ing a non-unan­i­mous jury vote for death vio­lat­ed both the Sixth Amendment and the Florida constitution. 

Missouri law autho­rizes judi­cial sen­tenc­ing in a cap­i­tal case when the jury is ​“unable to decide or agree upon the pun­ish­ment.” In those cir­cum­stances, it declares that there is a hung jury, and the judge becomes the tri­er respon­si­ble for find­ing and weigh­ing aggra­vat­ing and mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence and pro­nounc­ing sen­tence. However, grant­i­ng inde­pen­dent factfind­ing pow­ers to a cap­i­tal sen­tenc­ing judge is itself con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly prob­lem­at­ic: in January 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Hurst v. Florida that “[t]he Sixth Amendment requires a jury, not a judge, to find each fact nec­es­sary to impose a sen­tence of death.” 

At tri­al, Rice’s lawyer, Charles Hoskins told jurors that Rice had ​“snapped” when Durham told him ​“You’re nev­er see­ing [your son] again, and nei­ther is your fam­i­ly.” Mental-health evi­dence that Rice had a pitu­itary tumor at the time of the mur­der and was tak­ing 17 med­ica­tions that affect­ed his impulse con­trol and made him para­noid con­vinced all but one juror to vote in favor of a life sen­tence. Prosecutors argued that jurors had already found one aggra­vat­ing fac­tor that made Rice eli­gi­ble for the death penal­ty, and had not unan­i­mous­ly decid­ed that mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence out­weighed that aggravating circumstance. 

No jury has sen­tenced any­one to death in Missouri since 2013.