New twist in Ozark murder case: Supreme Court appoints special master in Nash habeas case

The Missouri Supreme Court on Oct. 1 made the unusual decision to sustain a state inmate’s petition for a writ of habeas corpus and to appoint a special master to oversee the proceedings, marking the latest twist in a mysterious, decades-old murder case from the Ozarks.

The high court has tapped St. Charles County Circuit Senior Judge Richard Zerr to oversee the habeas case of Donald “Doc” Nash, a former lead miner and union leader serving a de facto life sentence for the murder of his live-in girlfriend, Judy Spencer. Spencer was found strangled and shot near a vacant school outside of Salem in 1982.

Twenty-six years after her death, investigators revisited the case, detected trace amounts of Nash’s DNA under clippings of her fingernails, then charged Nash on the theory that she must have clawed at him in her final seconds. A jury convicted Nash in 2009, but he always has maintained his innocence. At 77, he is now one of the oldest inmates held by the Department of Corrections.

Nash is being represented pro bono by three attorneys from Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner: Charles Weiss, Stephen Snodgrass and Jonathan Potts. This legal team has managed to win the exonerations of three other inmates convicted of murder. In one of those cases — that of David Robinson — the court appointed a special master.

“This is great, great news,” said Weiss of the court’s Oct. 1 decision. According to his team’s review of the minutes reports from 2015 through the present, the Missouri Supreme Court has sustained only seven habeas writs in that time period, while declining to hear 289. Of those sustained, only Robinson has prevailed.

A spokesman for the Missouri Attorney General declined to comment because the case is still pending.

In accepting the special master appointment, Zerr agreed to oversee the proceedings as if he were a trial judge. Zerr must evaluate Nash’s claims of alleged violations of due process, the violation of his right to a complete defense and ineffective assistance. Zerr then will generate “findings of fact and conclusions of law,” though the high court is not obliged to adopt any of them.

The crux of Nash’s case is the fact that a key witness for the state, a lab technician, has recanted her trial testimony. She had opined to the jury in 2009 that because Spencer washed her hair on the night of her murder, that act would’ve had a “great effect” on the amount of Nash’s DNA underneath her fingernails — thus implying that the presence of his DNA after the hair-washing meant the couple came into contact later that night. This expert witness, however, now concedes that her testimony was speculative and was mischaracterized by the state in closing arguments, according to court records.

Another key part of Nash’s habeas petition is that his legal team tested Spencer’s shoe from which the laces were pulled to strangle her. Forensic analysis showed a male’s DNA on the shoe. That DNA profile, though, was inconsistent with Nash’s profile, and it was inconsistent with that of the Missouri State Highway Patrol trooper who first bagged it as evidence at the crime scene in 1982.

The stakes are high for Nash at this juncture. He already has exhausted his habeas claims at the federal level. In March 2014, the late U.S. Magistrate Judge Terry Adelman declined to grant Nash relief, but he expressed a hope that Missouri would provide Nash with a forum in which to present new evidence — evidence that Adelman found deserved “further serious consideration.” The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals as well concluded that Nash’s claims merited review but considered state court to be “a more appropriate forum.”

Nash then filed a habeas claim in St. Francois County, where he was serving his sentence, but after a day-long evidentiary hearing in 2018, then-Associate Circuit Court Judge Shawn McCarver denied the petition. Nash appealed to the Eastern District Court of Appeals, which summarily denied the petition.

Weiss noted that Nash’s health is deteriorating, but he sounded a note of optimism: “I think we can say that at least four of the Supreme Court judges think our petition is compelling.”

The case is State ex rel. Donald Nash v. Stanley Payne, SC97903.