MO TRIAL AND ERROR

Procedural Trial Errors in Missouri Execution Case - 25 Years Later Storey Ends

By Greg ‘Gadfly’ Doyle | PACOVILLA Corrections blog | February 13, 2015

According to an Associated Press article featured by Fox News, a thrice-condemned Missouri inmate has finally been executed a quarter of a century after the commission of his crime.

Walter Timothy Storey exhausted his final opportunity to gain yet another delay through a Supreme Court appeal over lethal injection concerns. The Court refused to hear his case allowing final judgment to proceed. Hence Mr. Storey’s long-delayed appointment with death and the rule of law finally met at the intersection of Reckoning and Justice.

The story of Walter Storey is not overshadowed by questionable witnesses, lack of DNA evidence, or any possibility that he had been framed by someone else. In fact, there was only one witness to his crime—his murder victim, 36-year-old Jill Frey—who lived next door.

As the story goes, Walter was unhappy over a pending divorce and had been staying at his mother’s house. He began drinking heavily on the night of February 2, 1990. As fate would have it, Walter ran out of beer, and needed more in order to further enhance his own defilement. However, he had no money for more beer.

Next door, neighbor Jill Frey had left the sliding glass door on her balcony open. Walter climbed onto the balcony and attacked Frey in her bedroom. He beat her so savagely that the coroner’s report revealed she suffered six broken ribs and severe wounds to her head and face. Imagine the terror and suffering Jill experienced in that attack inside her own home.

But the Storey was not finished. He went to her kitchen, grabbed a knife, and proceeded to slice Jill’s throat all the way back to her spine, nearly decapitating her. She stopped breathing and bled out immediately.

The following day, Walter returned to the scene of his crime. He tried to erase all traces of evidence of his presence by wiping down the crime scene and disposing of evidence. However, Walter missed one bloody palm print on a dresser. And, because he had been arrested previously, investigators were able to link Mr. Storey to the murder.

Picture this irrefutable evidence: the proximity of suspect to victim (next-door neighbors), victim’s blood on his hands via the palm print of the suspect (Walter) left at the crime scene. So why did it take twenty-five years to carry out Storey’s execution?

According to the Fox News piece, the culprit was technical trial error.

The Missouri Supreme Court tossed the conviction, citing concerns about ineffective assistance of counsel and “egregious” errors committed by Kenny Hulshof, who was with the Missouri attorney general’s office at the time and handled the prosecution. Hulshof was later a congressman and a candidate for governor.

Storey was tried again in 1997, and sentenced again to death. That conviction was also overturned, this time over a procedural error by the judge. Storey was sentenced to death a third time in 1999. (for full story see http://tinyurl.com/nvbxsvq)

Quite often, one of the first appeals filed on behalf of the condemned in a death penalty case is “ineffective assistance of counsel.” In other words, the defense lawyer was incompetent. If this is so often the case, then why aren’t more lawyers disbarred? I cannot imagine what egregious trial errors occurred from the prosecutorial side of the matter to convince the Missouri Supreme Court to overturn Storey’s first conviction.

This is the age old ethical dilemma of legal procedure: doing things right versus doing the right thing. Reversible error is the technical side of the court system. Everything during a trial must be followed to the smallest detail (and there are a lot of details in a legal proceeding), or somewhere down the road of appeal an attorney may convince a higher court judge that a reversible error has occurred.

And where a human life hangs in the balance (death penalty) lawyers and judges wrestle over these nuances, creating more delays, higher court costs, and a legal logjam on court dockets all across America. In my estimation, the notion of swift justice in America has been co-opted by the advent of technicality.

In the Storey matter, there really was no question of guilt. It appears the matter was finally settled when all of the proverbial “i”s were dotted, and the “t”s were crossed.

For what it’s worth, the attorney representing Walter Storey in the article said Walter was remorseful. While he was awaiting execution, apparently Walter spent thousands of hours helping crime victims through a prison program. That is good. In fact, it might even seem rehabilitative.

Still, there was the matter of Jill Frey, the victim; a special education teacher whose life was taken at the hands of Storey. Imagine all the thousands of hours missed by children with learning disabilities, who could have received the help they needed from Ms. Frey. Imagine the possibility of marriage, children, and grandchildren that Jill would never experience thanks to a brutal, selfish, and savage act brought about by her killer—Walter Storey.

I hope Walter Storey truly repented of his sin while incarcerated. I hope he made peace with God. My belief and faith have no issues with forgiving Walter Storey for his sins, however heinous they were.

But the law demands justice. And justice demanded the life of Walter Storey for the unlawful and brutal killing of Jill Frey. Though delayed for far too long, Storey’s execution was a reckoning and due payment for his vicious crime.

Only God knows the sincerity of Walter Storey’s remorse—but that is another story.