STILL WAITING FOR JUSTICE

WICKLIFFE, Ky. -- Wade Howard receives a card every year on the birthday of the man he murdered.

The cards arrive at the Farmington Correctional Center, where Howard is serving a 15-year sentence for killing Doye Coffer, his stepfather. Leota Groce, Coffer's sister, sends him Father's Day cards, too.

"He's not going to forget my brother," she promises.

Groce lives in Wickliffe with her husband, Jack, and her other brother, Charles. All three attended Howard's parole hearing in 1997 to insist that the boy they watched their brother raise be kept in prison. Groce says they'll return for the next hearing in September 2002.

Seven years after the sentencing, Groce is upset that the penalty was only 15 years in prison for a murder Howard confessed to and admitted planning. She criticizes Scott County Prosecuting Attorney Cristy Baker-Neel's willingness to reduce the charges from first-degree murder to second-degree murder.

"She didn't do a fair shake on this," Groce says.

A confession

Around midnight on March 15, 1993, the then-29-year-old Howard shot his stepfather with a 30-30 deer rifle when Coffer returned to the mobile home they shared in Miner, Mo. In a confession made after he was apprehended days later in Paducah, Ky., Howard admitted shooting his 46-year-old stepfather and afterward kicking him in the face with his cowboy boot. Groce says a pipe wrench with blood and hair on it was discovered in the trailer later.

Howard took his stepfather's keys, $400 from his wallet, his driver's license and a .22 pistol that was on a table and drove his stepfather's truck to Paducah, Ky., where he got a motel room.

Family members became worried when they were unable to reach Coffer in the ensuing days. Charles drove by the mobile home but seeing his brother's truck gone assumed he was away. Coffer's body was discovered when they broke the door down four days after the shooting.

Howard was charged with first-degree murder. At some point he was put in the same cell with Joshua Kezer, who had been charged with first-degree murder in the killing of 19-year-old Mischelle Lawless, a high-profile case in the county seat of Benton, Mo. Eventually he would testify at Kezer's trial, telling a jury Kezer admitted killing Lawless to him.

Scott County Prosecuting Attorney Cristy Baker-Neel charged Howard with first-degree murder. Groce says she called the prosecutor's office often, asking to be kept up to date on the proceedings. She wanted to be there all along the way.

She recalls phoning the prosecutor's office to get the date of the hearing to set a trial date. She says Baker-Neel assured her there was no reason for her to drive to Benton for the hearing, saying it would take only a few minutes. When Groce called back two days later, she was extremely upset to learn Howard had been given a plea bargain and a 15-year sentence.

Baker-Neel says the decision to make the plea bargain occurred quickly. She said family members can find out about the status of cases by calling her office but few do like Groce. "Many more are not interested," she said. She does not call the families, maintaining her workload is too heavy.

Groce is a retired nurse who worked for Dr. John Schoenberger in Cape Girardeau for 11 years. Her husband, Jack, works for Wal-Mart in Charleston, Mo. She was 10 when Doye, the youngest child in the family, was born in Anniston, Mo. Later she would walk Doye to the baby sitter's while her mother went into the fields to chop cotton. "He was more like my child than my brother," she says.

She thinks the prosecutor gave her brother's murderer a pass to get out of jail early to assure Kezer's conviction for first-degree murder. Kezer later was tried by Kenny Hulshof, a special prosecutor for the state attorney general's office. A jury found him guilty of second-degree murder and armed criminal action. He received concurrent 30-year sentences.

"It's as if one victim's life is more valuable than another victim's," Groce told the parole board.

At sheriff's request

Baker-Neel says Sheriff Bill Ferrell asked her to plead Howard's charges down. It is the only time she can remember him requesting a reduced charge for a suspect.

"I was kind of surprised," she said of Ferrell's request. "He had laid in wait and shot the guy."

Ferrell says he may have made the request. He said Howard came to them with his information. "He was not promised anything. We wouldn't have traded off his case for another case."

Baker-Neel insists that the plea offer was not based on whether Howard testified against Kezer, though Groce says that's what the prosecutor told her at the time.

Mitigating factors would have made first-degree murder difficult to prove, she said. To begin with, Howard blamed Coffer for his mother's death. Coffer was present when his ex-wife, Carolyn Thornton, shot herself to death in January 1993.

Baker-Neel said Coffer had been abusive to Howard over the course of their relationship and also had a criminal history. In his confession, Howard said his stepfather had beat him earlier on the day of the murder, when both had been drinking. He said he was not going to let it happen again.

"I don't think he would have been the most sympathetic victim," Baker-Neel said. "He had a reputation for being a bully."

Groce says her brother may have been involved in some things he shouldn't have been but didn't deserve to be murdered. She doesn't think Baker-Neel provided her family with justice.

"I have a bad feeling about this. My feeling is that nobody cared. She didn't care."

Groce told the parole board she did not want to see Howard put to death for killing her brother. "I told them I don't believe in an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth," she says. But she did want a just sentence, which to her would be the full 15 years, less if Howard were a model prisoner.

At the parole hearing, she was looking for some sign of remorse from Howard. She saw none. She also was told Howard had been in trouble 17 times at the prison.

The 60-year-old Charles, who is deaf, wrote the board a letter.

"I do not think (it's) best for Wade to be out of prison so soon," he wrote. "Maybe he needs to think about Doye like I do every day."