THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, November 4, 1994 TAG: 9411040704
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B2 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY LANE DEGREGORY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NAGS HEAD LENGTH: Medium: 82 lines
A 22-year-old Maggie Valley man who admitted strangling his mother after she threatened to cut his hair will receive a new sentencing hearing next year.
On Tuesday, the state Court of Appeals ruled that Superior Court Judge William Griffin used an improper example to show that Peter Kenneth Lundin murdered his mother with malice. Because of that error, the three-judge panel said, the defendant deserves a new hearing.
Lundin's second sentencing hearing will be held in Manteo and probably will be scheduled for January, said Robert Trivette, assistant district attorney, Thursday.
``That case is not on the Nov. 14 calendar - which is the next time Superior Court will be held in Dare County,'' Trivette said from his Elizabeth City office. ``And there's no Superior Court in December. We want to go ahead and do something on this. But it looks like it won't be until early 1995.''
A tall, slender man with dark hair and eyes, Peter Lundin grew up in Haywood County near the base of the Smokey Mountains. According to testimony during his July 1993 trial, Lundin's mother - Anna Schaftner Lundin - was an alcoholic who verbally abused her son and once had to turn him over to social workers because of her behavior.
In spring 1991, Anna Lundin and her husband, Ole, decided to separate. Ole and Peter Lundin took Anna Lundin to Atlanta on April 2, 1991, so she could catch a plane to Munich, Germany, where she planned to live with relatives. Five days later, Anna Lundin returned to her family's home in western North Carolina.
She started drinking, became aggressive, and ``approached Peter with scissors threatening to cut his hair,'' said W. Mark Spence, a Nags Head attorney who has represented Peter Lundin through all court proceedings.
Peter Lundin didn't want a hair cut. He grabbed his mother's shirt collar and pulled on it until he felt her body go limp. Then, he left the house.
When he returned two hours later, his mother was dead.
Peter Lundin took her body, wrapped it in plastic garbage bags, duct tape and rope and drove to the Outer Banks.
He buried his mom in a dune near the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse.
Buxton beach goers found the body Nov. 1, 1991, after a storm eroded part of the dune.
Investigators said the 59-year-old woman's neck had been fractured. Police spend more than four months trying to identify the corpse.
At his Superior Court trial last summer, Peter Lundin pled guilty to voluntary manslaughter. State recommendations said he should have been sentenced to six years in prison. Instead, the judge imposed the maximum penalty: 20 years.
Manual strangulation, said the judge, was evidence of malice. Malice, the judge declared, was enough to warrant the maximum sentence.
But Spence argued that since strangulation was the method of manslaughter, it could not also be the sole evidence of malice.
The three Court of Appeals judges agreed.
``Circumstances surrounding the killing, and the lack of just cause, excuse, or justification for the killing do support a finding of malice,'' Judge S. Gerald Arnold ruled for the appeals panel. ``But, because the court erred in basing its finding on the evidence of strangulation, we must remand this case for resentencing.''
Spence said that was all he'd hoped for. Peter Lundin will not receive another trial.
But a second Superior Court judge now will get to hear mitigating and aggravating circumstances in the case and make a new sentencing decision.
``He can't lose,'' Spence said of Peter Lundin, currently an inmate at Brown Creek Correctional Center in Polkton, N.C. ``The judge could give him the same sentence. But it can't get any worse. He could just put Peter on probation.''
During his 1993 sentencing, court officials said that even with a 20-year sentence, Peter Lundin could be eligible for parole by 1997. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Peter K. Lundin
Admitted strangling his mother.
KEYWORDS: MURDER STRANGLING SENTENCING
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