"Kansas Supreme Court to hear death penalty appeals," is the AP report, via the Topeka Capital-Journal.
The Kansas Supreme Court on Tuesday will hear the appeals of two Wichita brothers who were sentenced to die for a quadruple homicide in December 2000.
The court scheduled separate two-hour hearings for Jonathan and Reginald Carr.
The brothers were convicted of shooting three men and a woman on Dec. 15, 2000, as the victims knelt on a snow-covered field.
And:
Issues raised by the Carrs' lawyers on appeal include a judge's refusal to move the trial outside Sedgwick County, the fact that the brothers were tried together and the constitutionality of the death penalty.
The Wichita Eagle reports, "Kansas Supreme Court to hear oral arguments Dec. 17 on Carr brothers appeal." It's by Rick Plumlee.
The Carr brothers are appealing their convictions and death penalties. The appeals were filed in November 2002, when a Sedgwick County found them guilty of murder, kidnapping, rape and sodomy during a home invasion two years earlier that left four people dead.
Reginald Carr’s attorneys filed 23 extension requests before filing a written brief in October 2009. Jonathan Carr’s attorneys filed 20 extensions before filing a written brief in the previous month.
Sedgwick County’s District Attorney’s Office filed its brief for Reginald Carr’s appeal in October after requesting eight extensions. The D.A.’s brief on Jonathan Carr was filed last July after nine extensions.
Some of the D.A.’s extensions came after the defense attorneys filed supplemental briefs, requiring the prosecutors to adjust their responses.
The appeal process also stalled because of a legal dispute over the state’s capital punishment law.
A little more than a year after the Carrs’ trial, all capital cases were put on hold for more than a year after the Kansas Supreme Court declared the state’s death penalty unconstitutional in December 2004.
Cases involving seven death sentences, including the Carrs, were halted for two years while the state appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. The nation’s highest court ruled in Kansas’ far in June 2006.
Earlier coverage from Kansas begins at the link.
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