Supreme Court's death penalty ruling has Missouri implications

Associated Press WriterThe Missouri attorney general has identified six condemned men who were sent to the state's death row by a judge instead of a jury, a practice the U.S. Supreme Court today declared unconstitutional.

Attorney general's spokesman Scott Holste said the office was reviewing today's ruling and had no immediate comment about its impact in Missouri, including whether the death penalty would stand for the six at Potosi Correctional Center.

The state public defender's office was also reviewing the ruling and had no immediate comment, said director Marty Robinson.

Ruling in a case from Arizona, the Supreme Court overturned the death sentences of at least 150 convicted killers Monday, ruling that juries and not judges must make the life-or-death decisions.

The 7-2 ruling means that executions ordered in at least five states -- Arizona, Idaho, Montana, Colorado and Nebraska -- must be reconsidered.

The decision concerned instances in which juries determined defendants' guilt or innocence and judges alone decided their punishment.

The court held that such sentences violate defendants' constitutional right to trial by jury.

Missouri law allows judges to impose the death penalty in some cases, including when a jury is deadlocked about a sentence in a capital case.

Holste identified these six death-row inmates as having been condemned by judges:

-- Keith A. Smith, 34, arriving on death row from Jackson County on Sept. 19, 1994.

-- Antonio D. Richardson, 27, on death row from the city of St. Louis since July 2, 1993.

-- Michael Taylor, 35, condemned from Jackson County since May 14, 1991.

-- Joseph E. Whitfield, 62, from the city of St. Louis, arrived on death row Jan. 12, 1990.

-- Andre D. Morrow, 32, sentenced from St. Louis County and on death row since June 21, 1996.

-- Andrew A. Lyons, 44, who is serving two death sentences, one of which was imposed by a judge from Scott County in a case moved from Cape Girardeau County. He has been on death row since June 28, 1996.

A judge imposed the death penalty in Missouri as recently as April. Boone County Circuit Judge Gene Hamilton ordered the death penalty for Deandra Buchanan, 28, of Columbia, after a Henry County jury deadlocked during the penalty phase of Buchanan's trial.

The same jury had convicted Buchanan in March of three counts of first-degree murder for the November 2000 slayings of his aunt, his stepfather and his girlfriend.

Buchanan's attorneys had objected at the time to Hamilton's action, but Hamilton replied that the jury must have found unanimously and beyond a reasonable doubt that there was at least one statutory aggravating circumstance -- a requirement under the law in reaching a death verdict.

"I went through the same mechanics the jury would have gone through," Hamilton said. Under the state constitution, jurors "would have had to have found" a statutory aggravating circumstance "to reach the verdict they did," he added.

The Supreme Court case is Ring v. Arizona, 01-488.