Judge tests authority to impose death penalty

The Associated Press

ST. LOUIS -- A St. Louis County judge has become the first in Missouri to impose a death penalty without a jury recommendation since a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2002 left it unclear if a judge could take such action.

St. Louis County Circuit Judge Steven H. Goldman on Friday sentenced Scott McLaughlin to death for the fatal stabbing of his former girlfriend, Beverly Guenther, in Earth City.

Jurors in the case were dismissed Oct. 2 after they could not agree on whether to sentence McLaughlin to death or life in prison without parole. They had convicted McLaughlin, 33, of Wright City of first-degree murder, rape and armed criminal action.

Goldman's finding that he can impose a death sentence is expected to be appealed on grounds that it violated McLaughlin's Sixth Amendment right to a trial by jury.

In a 2002 ruling in a case out of Arizona, the U.S. Supreme Court said jurors, not judges, had to decide whether sufficient aggravating circumstances existed to support a death-penalty decision.

Since then, a divided Missouri Supreme Court has found death penalties imposed by a judge to be violations of the Sixth Amendment.

Before becoming deadlocked, the jury in McLaughlin's case found unanimously that Guenther's murder on Nov. 20, 2003, was "outrageously and wantonly vile, horrible and inhuman." Jurors also found that factors favoring a life sentence did not outweigh those favoring a death penalty.

Goldman said those findings meet standards set by the Supreme Court in the Arizona case regarding the role of juries in sentencings, giving him the authority to impose the death sentence.

He also sentenced McLaughlin on Friday to consecutive life sentences for rape and armed criminal action.

McLaughlin's attorneys acknowledged that their clinet stabbed Guenther, 45, of Moscow Mills, to death in a parking lot and then had sex with her corpse before leaving her body in a park.

But attorneys Robert Steele and David Kenyon argued that the killing did not include the "cool reflection" by McLaughlin that is required to support first-degree murder.

Steele and Kenyon asked Goldman for a new trial or a sentence of life in prison without parole, saying jury instructions adopted in March by a committee appointed by the Missouri Supreme Court do not match language in state law.

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Information from: St. Louis Post-Dispatch, http://www.stltoday.com