Death row inmate raises legal issue with Cape jury

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- The racial composition of Cape Girardeau County juries is again an issue in a death penalty case before the Missouri Supreme Court.

Earl Ringo Jr., 29, claims he received ineffective legal counsel prior to and during his trial for murdering two people at a Columbia, Mo., restaurant on Independence Day 1998.

Ringo, who is black, says his attorneys should have opposed the selection of a jury from Cape Girardeau County because of its alleged "history of under-representing African-Americans" among the pool of potential jurors.

The all-white jury found Ringo guilty of two counts of first-degree murder in June 1999 and recommended death sentences on each charge.

Although the jury issue is prominent in written arguments submitted to the court, it went unmentioned Tuesday during oral arguments.

Public defender Melinda Pendergraph of Columbia said afterward that with limited time to present her case before the court, she chose to focus on how a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling applies to Ringo's situation. The federal ruling made it easier for defendants in death penalty cases to claim ineffective counsel when defense lawyers fail to adequately investigate and present mitigating evidence of diminished capacity.

Convictions upheld

The Missouri high court upheld Ringo's convictions and sentences on direct appeal in 2000. The latest appeal involves rulings made last year by a Boone County judge on Ringo's ineffective counsel claims. The Supreme Court will issue a ruling at a later date.

During oral arguments, Pendergraph said that in failing to fully pursue substantial evidence that Ringo suffered horrific childhood abuse that caused him to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder and depression, his trial attorneys failed to provide an adequate defense. Such evidence could have convinced jurors that Ringo lacked the capacity for "cool deliberation" necessary to prove first-degree murder, Pendergraph said.

"There is no way you can say they looked for all of the reasonable mitigating evidence," Pendergraph said.

Assistant attorney general Stephanie Morrell said the defense employed various experts and that any decision not to present their testimony to the jury was part of a legitimate legal strategy.

"Counsel's action in this case was reasonable," Morrell said. "They investigated his mental health, and they investigated his social history."

In the written arguments the court will weigh in deciding the case, Pendergraph said that Ringo's trial attorneys were concerned about the racial nature of the case since the two victims were white. As such, they should have opposed selecting the jury from Cape Girardeau County and later objected to the fact that blacks were underrepresented in the jury pool.

Claims of racial bias

Although blacks represented 4.5 percent of the county's population, the pool of 163 potential jurors included just four blacks, less than 2.5 percent of the group.

"Earl's counsel did not need a statistician to know that no African-American would be on this jury, given the historical record," Pendergraph wrote.

Morrell's brief states that claims of racial bias are refuted by the record in that potential jurors were questioned extensively about the issue during the jury selection process.

"Appellant makes no showing whatsoever that the jury was biased against him, and therefore cannot show prejudice from counsel's failure to challenge the jury panel," Morrell wrote.

The Supreme Court unanimously upheld Cape Girardeau County's jury selection process in deciding another death penalty case last year. In that case, Terrance L. Anderson, who is black, said county Circuit Court Clerk Charles Hudson's method of compiling juror lists resulted in blacks being underrepresented. The high court found no fault with Hudson's procedures and upheld Anderson's convictions for murdering a Poplar Bluff, Mo., couple.

Pendergraph said Tuesday that Ringo's claim differs from Anderson's in that the county's jury selection process isn't being challenged.

"I don't think that case precludes a finding of ineffective counsel," Pendergraph said.

On July 4, 1998, Ringo and an accomplice robbed the Ruby Tuesday restaurant in Columbia where Ringo once worked as a cook. The restaurant hadn't yet opened for the day and only one employee was present.

Ringo fatally shot Dennis Poyser, a 45-year-old delivery driver, who happened to be there. The accomplice, Quinton Jones, then shot and killed restaurant manager Joanna Bay-singer, 22. Although Ringo wasn't present, Jones told police he killed Baysinger at Ringo's urging. Jones was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole.

The case is Earl Ringo Jr. v. State of Missouri.

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