Steve Knox was sentenced to death by the State of Mississippi for the murder of a woman. According to court documents the victim, Ella Mae Spears, was reported missing by her family. When police went to her home they would locate her body locked in the trunk of her car. Steve Knox would be arrested soon after having possessions belonging to the victim on him. Steve Knox was convicted and sentenced to death.
On October 22, 1998, Ella Mae Spears was scheduled to travel from Liberty to Fayette, Mississippi, to babysit the children of her niece, Guy Alice Spears Green. When she failed to arrive as scheduled, her family contacted the Sheriff’s Office. The authorities went to her house, where they found her body locked in the trunk of her car. Autopsy results indicated that her death was consistent with manual strangulation. Later that day Steve Knox was apprehended in the area of Ella Mae Spears’s house with her missing house and car keys in his back pocket. A search of Knox’s parents’ home yielded a shirt and jogging pants which were stained with wet, reddish brown spots. Knox could not remember how he came to be wearing bloody clothing and how the keys came to be in his back pocket. He stated that he woke up on the morning of October 22, went outside to a field, and then woke up in the field some time later with blood on his clothes and no memory of what had happened.
Jason Keller was sentenced to death by the State of Mississippi for a robbery murder. According to court documents Jason Keller would enter a convenience store where he would shoot and kill the owner, Hat Nguyen, during the commission of a robbery. Jason Keller would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
On the morning of June 21, 2007, someone shot and killed Hat Thi Nguyen (“Hat”) inside Food Mart, a convenience store she owned in Biloxi, Mississippi. A customer, Terri Muffi, found her. Muffi saw a pack of cigarettes lying on the floor and noticed that the cash register was not completely closed. Upon looking behind the counter, Muffi noticed a woman lying on the floor, so she rushed behind the counter and called 911.
¶ 5. An owner of a neighboring business, Teo Nguyen (no relation) (“Teo”), entered the store and immediately noticed a distressed woman behind the counter on the telephone. Muffi asked Teo the name of the store. He went outside to confirm that the store was named Food Mart. Shortly thereafter, Teo saw Hat lying on the floor behind the counter and became concerned about her children. He walked to the rear of the store and called for them but received no answer. Teo went back to the front of the store and took the telephone from Muffi so he could speak with the 911 operator. Muffi proceeded to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) on Hat. On the witness stand at trial, Teo recalled that it appeared as though there had been a struggle between Hat and her attacker. He also noticed that the cash register was damaged.
¶ 6. Within minutes of the 911 call, first responders were on the scene, including Sergeant Darryl Montiforte of the Biloxi Police Department. Montiforte recalled that, upon his arrival on the scene, a woman (later identified as Muffi) was performing CPR on Hat. Hat did not appear to be responding and did not have a pulse. Montiforte discovered Hat’s son, unharmed, sleeping in the rear of the store. Montiforte testified that the cash register appeared to be undamaged and closed.
¶ 7. On the morning of the shooting, Keller, having wrecked and abandoned a stolen truck, set out on foot in possession of a stolen gun before stopping by Hat’s store for cigarettes. Keller recounted to Investigator Michael Brown in his third statement, which was admitted into evidence:
JASON KELLER: ․ Don’t know why I did it, but I did it. I asked her for a pack of cigarettes. When she turned around, I pulled my gun out and when she turn back around, I told her give me all the money. She started screaming no. I just shot her ․
Jason Keller recalled that he had shot her “once or twice” before she ran out the door of the convenience store (although he could not remember exactly how many times he had shot her), and he had followed her out of the store with the gun. She told him she would give him all the money in the store, so they returned inside the store. Keller then shot her again. Hat fell to the floor, at which point Keller shot her one final time at close range (referred to by the forensic pathologist as “contact range”) in the back of the head. Keller retrieved the money from the register before fleeing on foot to his stepfather’s house, where he stole a second truck. Keller then went to a bank to cash the rolls of change he had stolen from the convenience store. Surveillance tape at Keesler Federal Credit Union confirmed that Keller had come into the bank with rolls of change to exchange them for cash. Keller then proceeded to a “crack house.” Having sold the stolen gun used in the shooting in exchange for crack cocaine, Keller remained at the house smoking crack cocaine until nightfall. He then left in the stolen truck, driving around until police attempted to pull him over. After initially refusing to yield to police pursuit, Keller finally stopped the vehicle. When he exited the vehicle, Keller, attempting suicide, pointed a metal object that resembled a shotgun barrel at the police to induce them to shoot him. He was shot by arresting officers and transported to Biloxi Regional Medical Center. While in the emergency room, officers attempted to interrogate him on two different occasions. The day after his shooting, Investigator Brown of the Biloxi Police Department conducted a recorded police interview with Keller while he was being treated in the intensive care unit (ICU) at Biloxi Regional.
¶ 8. At trial, without objection by the defense, the State tendered Dr. Paul McGarry as an expert witness in forensic pathology. Dr. McGarry testified that Hat had four gunshot wounds in her body. He identified a gunshot wound to her abdomen (wound C) as nonfatal, because it had not penetrated any vital structures. He testified that, after the initial gunshot, Hat still would have been able to walk, talk, think, and engage in movement (though in pain). Dr. McGarry identified gunshot wound A, a shot that entered Hat’s head about four inches above her right ear canal but stayed beneath the scalp and did not penetrate her skull or brain. Dr. McGarry testified that wound A also had been a nonfatal wound that likely would have stunned her and knocked her down but would not have paralyzed her or seriously damaged her brain. According to Dr. McGarry, gunshot wound D went into the brain itself. It would have done more serious damage by decreasing the degree of consciousness and/or rendering her unconscious, along with causing her to suffer brain damage. However, she still would have been able to move the muscles and use the nerves of her extremities. Finally, he described a gunshot wound in which the bullet entered the base of the skull where the spinal cord connects to the brain and traveled to her cerebellum, labeled wound “B.” That shot was identified as the fatal one.
¶ 9. Keller was indicted by a grand jury for capital murder as a nonhabitual offender on March 31, 2008. On May 6, 2008, the State filed a motion to amend the indictment, seeking to charge Keller as a habitual offender pursuant to Mississippi Code Section 99–19–83. Keller maintains that he did not receive notice of the motion, nor did he receive a hearing on the motion. He further contends that he was not appointed counsel at the instant stage of the proceedings. On June 6, 2008, Judge Jerry O. Terry granted the State’s motion. Keller was appointed counsel on June 11, 2008.
¶ 10. Judge Clark1 presided over an omnibus hearing on August 27, 2009, during which arguments were heard from both parties on Keller’s motion to suppress statements that he had made to police during his hospitalization. Keller had given statements to police in the emergency room and in the ICU. The trial judge granted Keller’s motion in part, suppressing statements Keller had made to police while being treated in the emergency room but not suppressing statements Keller had made to police while in the ICU.
¶ 11. Jury selection in the trial commenced on October 5, 2009. Trial began immediately thereafter, resulting in a jury verdict of guilty of capital murder, on October 7, 2009, after just over thirty minutes of deliberation. The jury returned a sentence of death on October 8, 2009. Keller timely filed a direct appeal.
Kelvin Jordan was sentenced to death by the State of Mississippi for the murder of a father and his two year old son. According to court documents Kelvin Jordan and his cousin Frontrell Edwards would force a father out of his car into a wooded area where he was fatally shot and would also shoot the two year old boy. Kelvin Jordan and Frontrell Edwards would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death. Frontrell Edwards (Fontrell Edwards) was later resentenced to life
On October 5, 1995, after smoking marijuana and drinking beer outside a Pachuta truck stop, cousins Kelvin Jordan and Frontrell Edwards formulated a plan to rob someone in order to get money to attend a football game. They discussed having to kill the victim so that they would not later be identified. Jordan had a .25 caliber pistol, and Edwards had a .22 pistol.
¶ 4. Previously that night, Tony Roberts had picked up his two-year-old son Codera Bradley from the child’s mother’s residence. When Roberts stopped at the truck stop, Edwards asked him for a ride. Roberts agreed, and Jordan and Edwards left with Roberts and the child. After heading south on Highway 35, Roberts stated that he had to work the next morning and he decided that he had driven Jordan and Edwards as far as he could. When he stopped the car, he was shot twice in the head. Codera was later shot in the head. Jordan and Edwards dumped the bodies on a wooded dirt road off the highway.
¶ 5. Law enforcement officers received an anonymous phone call implicating Edwards and Jordan in the killings. After a search of the trailer where the suspects were staying, officers found a pistol and items thought to have been stolen from Roberts’s vehicle. Upon questioning by various officers, Jordan admitted that he and Edwards had robbed and killed Roberts and Bradley. In his statements to police, Jordan blamed Edwards for the shootings. However, Jordan did confess that he knew about the plan to rob someone, that he suggested to Edwards that they rob Roberts when Roberts pulled into the gas station, that he had a pistol when he left his house that afternoon, that he had fired a shot at Roberts, that he helped Edwards dispose of Roberts’s body, and that he helped burn the car and get rid of the pistols.
¶ 6. After giving several statements, Jordan took the officers to the location of the bodies. Both victims had been shot in the head. Roberts’s car had been stolen, and his pockets had been emptied. Jordan and Edwards had also stolen Roberts’s Nike shoes. Jordan had stated that he had brought a .25 caliber pistol with him and that Edwards had a .22 caliber pistol. Edwards and Jordan had also used Roberts’s .380 pistol at some point during the crime. Roberts had been shot twice in the head. One wound was a non-fatal shot that passed through Roberts’s face. Codera had been shot once in the head. The medical examiner and the State’s firearms expert were unable to determine which wounds had been caused by which pistol.
¶ 7. Jordan was indicted by a Clarke County jury on two counts of capital murder. He was tried and convicted of both counts, and the jury then considered punishment in a sentencing hearing. After weighing the aggravating and mitigating factors, the jury returned verdicts of death on both counts. Jordan appealed, and the two capital murder convictions and death sentences were affirmed unanimously by this Court. Jordan v. State, 728 So.2d 1088 (Miss.1998).
James Hutto was sentenced to death by the State of Mississippi for the murder of an elderly woman. According to court documents James Hutto would befriend the victim, eighty-one-year-old Ethel W. Simpson, and after going to a casino together the woman was murdered. James Hutto was arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
This case concerns the killing of eighty-one-year-old Ethel W. Simpson. The following facts were established at trial.
¶3. On September 8, 2010, James Cobb Hutto III, a Jasper, Alabama, resident, contacted his ex-girlfriend, Sherri Lawson. Hutto told Lawson he wanted to see her and, on Friday, September 10, he purchased a used Camaro and drove to Clinton, Mississippi. Hutto and Lawson stayed together that weekend at the Comfort Inn in Clinton. At some point that weekend, Hutto’s Camaro broke down and was towed to a local repair shop.
¶4. On Monday, September 13, Hutto and Lawson parted ways after spending the weekend together. According to Lawson, Hutto indicated that he was trying to get back to Alabama. He also gave Lawson the paperwork to repair the broken Camaro in case she wanted to keep the car for herself. Later that afternoon, Hutto went to the Baptist Healthplex on the Mississippi College Campus in Clinton, located approximately half a mile away from the Comfort Inn. Several employees and patrons of the Healthplex encountered Hutto that day, including Ethel W. Simpson.
¶5. While at the Healthplex, Hutto befriended Simpson. Simpson drove Hutto back to the Comfort Inn and then drove home. And later that night, she went back to the hotel and picked up Hutto to socialize. The two took Simpson’s silver Mercedes to the Riverwalk casino in Vicksburg, Mississippi, arriving at 8:45 p.m. Hutto and Simpson spent a few hours gambling, and Simpson bought dinner for the two at a restaurant inside the casino. Hutto and Simpson left the casino together at 11:24 p.m.
¶6. About an hour after leaving the casino, Hutto arrived back at the Comfort Inn alone with Simpson’s Mercedes. He went to his room, emerged wearing different clothes, and left the Comfort Inn at approximately 12:51 a.m., seven minutes after arriving back at the hotel. Hutto then drove Simpson’s Mercedes back to Vicksburg, where he gambled at the Ameristar casino. At 2:11 a.m., he left the casino, and, according to witness testimony, a tag-reading camera on Interstate 20 in Rankin County captured an image of Simpson’s car traveling east toward Alabama just after 3:00 a.m.
¶7. On the morning of September 14, 2010, Thomas Winstead, Simpson’s brother and roommate, alerted Simpson’s son that Simpson had not returned home the night before. Ken Simpson attempted to inquire into his mother’s whereabouts, and when she could not be found, he contacted the Clinton Police Department. During the investigation into Simpson’s whereabouts, law-enforcement officials determined that Hutto was the last person seen with Simpson. On September 17, 2010, a member of the Auburn (Alabama) Police Department spotted Hutto driving Simpson’s silver Mercedes. Law-enforcement officials stopped Hutto and took him into custody in Lee County, Alabama.
¶8. On the same day as Hutto’s arrest, Simpson’s body was found on a hog farm in Edwards, Mississippi, just off Interstate 20. Edwards is located in Hinds County and is approximately halfway between Clinton and Vicksburg. An empty hog-feed container partially covered Simpson’s body. Simpson died from severe injuries to her head and neck, and forensic testing later identified her blood on the Nike flip-flops that Hutto wore on the night of Simpson’s disappearance.
¶9. After Hutto’s arrest, law-enforcement officials from Alabama interviewed him on four separate occasions. All four of these interrogations occurred in Alabama. Hutto told law- enforcement officials that he and Simpson had gone to the casino on the night of September 13, but he claimed that a man named Mark Cox had killed Simpson. Law-enforcement officials later determined that Mark Cox, an Alabama resident, was in Alabama at the time of Simpson’s disappearance.
Marlon Howell was sentenced to death by the State of Mississippi for a murder committed during a robbery. According to court documents Marlon Howell approached the victim, Hugh David Pernell, who was in his car delivering newspapers. Marlon Howell would demand money then shoot and kill the victim. Marlon Howell would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death.
In the early morning hours of May 15, 2000, Hugh David Pernell, a newspaper carrier, was shot and killed in his car on Broad Street in New Albany while running his newspaper route. The shooting occurred in front of Charles Rice’s house. Rice would later tell law enforcement that he had heard two cars on the street in front of his house at around five o’clock in the morning. He looked out his window and saw two vehicles, one behind the other, stopped in the street. A man exited the rear car and approached the driver’s side window of the front vehicle. After some commotion, the man pulled a pistol and shot the driver of the front vehicle. The shooter then got back in the passenger seat of the rear vehicle and left the scene. Pernell suffered a single gunshot wound to the chest and died at the scene. Rice immediately called 911 and reported the shooting and later told law enforcement officers that the shooter was a young black male who had fled the scene in a late model, dark-colored Oldsmobile.
¶ 5. Law enforcement officers received an anonymous tip that Curtis Lipsey was involved in the murder. The investigation revealed that Lipsey, Adam Ray, and Marlon Howell had been riding around together throughout the previous night and the early morning hours of the day of the shooting. Ray’s grandmother owned a dark Oldsmobile Cutlass. Upon questioning, Ray and Lipsey implicated Howell. Howell was arrested and claimed that he had no involvement in the murder. Howell told officers that he had been in Corinth with a woman at the time of the killing; however, he was unable to provide a name or an address for this woman. After Howell’s arrest, Rice identified Howell in a police line-up.
¶ 6. A Lorcin .380 caliber pistol was found in the bushes behind Brandon Shaw’s house. Forensic testing indicated that the bullet that killed Pernell was fired by this Lorcin pistol. A shell casing found near the windshield of Pernell’s car was consistent with that weapon but could not be positively matched.
¶ 7. Shaw testified that Howell, Ray, and Lipsey had come to his house in the dark Oldsmobile Cutlass in the early morning hours after the shooting. Shaw and Lipsey testified that they had seen Howell with an object wrapped in a shirt under his arm. Shaw and Lipsey testified that they had seen Howell walking out from behind the house where the pistol was later found. Shaw told the police chief that he had seen Howell go behind the house carrying something. While at Shaw’s house, Adam Ray told Shaw and others that “Marlon had shot somebody.” The trial court found that the statement by Ray in Howell’s presence amounted to an adoptive admission when Howell did not renounce the statement. After the shooting, Howell got a ride to Blue Mountain with Shaw, and during the drive, Howell told Shaw not to tell anyone what had happened.
¶ 8. The State alleged that Howell had killed Pernell in a robbery attempt. Marcus Powell testified that Howell had told him on the night of the killing that he needed money to pay his probation officer and that he was going to have to “make a sting” in order to get the money. Shaw also testified that Howell had commented on robbing a man at a gas station earlier that night.
¶ 9. Ray and Lipsey pleaded guilty to manslaughter and armed robbery in the killing of Pernell. As part of his plea agreement, Lipsey was to offer truthful testimony at any subsequent trial related to Pernell’s killing. At Howell’s trial, Lipsey testified that Howell had shot Pernell, and Lipsey also corroborated Powell’s testimony that Howell had said that he needed money in order to pay his probation officer the next day or else they would not see him around anymore. Lipsey also testified that Howell had flashed the car’s lights at Pernell to get Pernell to pull over.
¶ 10. At his trial, Howell presented an alibi defense by offering as witnesses his father and sister, who testified that Howell had been at home in the early morning hours of May 15, 2000. Howell presented no evidence that during the relevant time surrounding Pernell’s killing, he had been with a woman in Corinth
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