Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, January 17, 1994 TAG: 9401170029
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: COLUMBIA, S.C. LENGTH: Medium
He confessed to the killing and to raping two other elderly women in earlier burglaries. A jury sentenced him to death in the electric chair.
But Simmons contends jurors chose death because they mistakenly feared a life sentence would permit eventual parole. On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments on Simmons' request that his sentence be overturned.
He says the trial judge should have told jurors that a life sentence in his case - a murder conviction after a previous conviction for a violent crime, the rapes - would have carried no chance for parole in South Carolina.
Juror Judy Wicker, for instance, said she worried that Simmons could get out after 25 years. The 42-year-old teacher said that if she had known he would never be freed, she would have let him live out his days behind bars.
But at the 1991 trial, she didn't trust the legal system enough to believe that life meant life behind bars. For reasons from pardons to new laws, convicted criminals are sometimes released, even from long sentences, and jurors no longer believe a life sentence truly means life in prison.
Jurors in the Simmons trial had asked the judge whether parole was possible if Simmons were given a life sentence. Circuit Judge Ralph Anderson told them simply they must consider death and life imprisonment "in their plain and ordinary meaning."
Prosecutors played on jurors' fears that Simmons could be released, said David Bruck, Simmons' lawyer.
But a death sentence is indeed the only sure way to prevent parole, insist prosecutors in 12 states who have filed a brief supporting South Carolina's attempts to execute Simmons.
Telling jurors a defendant faces life without the chance of parole is too often inaccurate, the prosecutors say.
"Just because he's parole ineligible doesn't mean he won't get out . . . There's no law prohibiting him from being furloughed, put on work release or being pardoned," said Solicitor Dick Harpootlian, who prosecuted Simmons and will argue the case before the Supreme Court.
Other states also worry about legal precedents if the court orders judges to burden jurors with information outside the specifics of a crime and the immediate punishment.
"We're developing death penalty law," Harpootlian said, "to the point where we're almost debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, rather than determining whether the conduct of the defendant . . . merits the ultimate penalty, death."
by CNB