Convicted killer seeks to commute death sentence to life in prison

The lawyer for a Jefferson County man, sentenced to death for the murder of an elderly DeSoto couple, asked the Missouri Supreme Court to resentence him to life in prison without parole.

Rosemary Percival, the public defender representing Carman Deck on appeal, said Missouri law requires that Deck be resentenced to life. This appeal is from Deck’s third penalty-phase trial – and his third death sentence.

The law in question, Section 565.040.2, “clearly and expressly states that in the event any death sentence is held to be unconstitutional, the trial court should resentence the defendant to life without parole,” Percival told the court Tuesday.

In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court found the defendant’s second death sentence to be unconstitutional because the jury could see Deck in shackles during the trial, Percival argued.

The terms “any” and “unconstitutional” cover a broad range, she said. “If your constitutional rights are violated, whether it’s due process or whether it’s 6th Amendment, the statute doesn’t draw a line,” Percival said.

Only when an aggravator is invalid is a new trial warranted, she said, noting that the presence of an invalid aggravator is the one exception the Legislature wrote into the law.

Evan J. Buchheim, assistant attorney general, told the court subsection 2 is to be used as an instruction of what to do when the death penalty itself is deemed unconstitutional – or when it’s unconstitutional to apply it to certain people, for example, juveniles and the mentally retarded.

The case is State v. Deck, SC89830.

Read more on this story in Thursday’s papers.