Friday, Jul 4, 2008
But legal experts say the jury's refusal to convict him on premeditation charges may save the 22-year-old from the death penalty.
Nov 3, 1999 | After 10 hours of deliberation, a jury found Aaron McKinney guilty Wednesday of first-degree felony murder in the bludgeoning of gay student Matthew Shepard. McKinney was acquitted on the higher charge of premeditated first-degree murder. The same jury now must decide whether to impose life without parole or death.
Testimony begins Thursday morning in the penalty phase, expected to last more than a week.
The complex case presented the jury with five different murder and manslaughter options, and the possibility of up to three simultaneous murder convictions. Legal experts said the jury's mixed verdict all but eliminated any chance of a death sentence.
On the first, key question, the jury chose the middle option of second degree murder, meaning McKinney killed Shepard "maliciously," but without premeditation. That conviction carries a sentence of 20 years to life. Regardless of that choice, Wyoming law then required the jury to convict on two separate "felony murder" charges if they found that Shepard died as a direct result of an intentional kidnapping or aggravated robbery. They found McKinney guilty on both those counts, each of which can be punished by death.
But relatively liberal Albany County hasn't seen a death sentence in decades, and the finding against premeditation sent a clear signal of the jury's intentions. Former federal prosecutor and University of Wyoming law professor Gerald Gallivan called the verdict a best-case scenario for the defense, given McKinney's earlier confession.
"If you get a jury that goes on felony murder and not premeditated murder, you probably have a good predictor of what they're going to do relative to the penalty phase," he said. A unanimous decision is required for death.
The jury of seven men and five women also convicted the 22-year-old roofer of kidnapping and aggravated robbery.
A collective gasp rang out from the gallery at the announcement of the single not-guilty verdict, but reactions from the attorneys and families were muted all around. The attorneys remain under a gag order and none of the parties would comment. McKinney bit his lower lip and bowed his head when the first capital conviction was read.
McKinney confessed to his role in the crime just two days after beating Matthew Shepard with a .357 magnum and abandoning him tied to a fence in the country. Three days later, the gay college student died from severe brain damage. McKinney's attorneys spent the trial fighting for a reduced conviction to escape the death penalty. Co-defendant Russell Henderson plea bargained two life sentences without possibility of parole last April.
Fallout from McKinney's controversial gay panic defense was difficult to gauge, because of the complexity of the legal theories the jury was asked to consider, and the mixed verdict they returned. Judge Barton Voigt barred testimony concerning McKinney's homosexual history Monday, but the jury heard an overview of it in the opening statement, and a watered down panic defense dominated the closing argument. Public Defender Dion Custis neatly summarized the defense just before the jury began deliberations: "It started because Matthew Shepard grabbed his balls. It continued because Aaron McKinney was a chronic meth user."
"Half of the panic defense got into this trial," said David Smith, spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign. "The cornerstone of the defense case was anti-gay prejudice." He was elated that the jury convicted McKinney of malice in spite of those elements. "We feel this verdict was fair and justified, and it sends a message to the country that these crimes will not be tolerated," he said.
But Jeffrey Montgomery, monitoring the trial for several other prominent gay rights groups, saw the lesser conviction as a partial success for the gay panic defense. "I think those gay panic elements had some resonance with this jury. It may have even been a subliminal resonance which made them go for the lower verdict." Graham Baxendale, a political science professor who was teaching an advanced course in hate crimes at the University of Wyoming when the murder happened, agreed. He felt the malice conviction was inevitable, and the limited gay panic defense may well have swayed the jury away from the first degree premeditation conviction. "If you get two or three [jurors] on the intoxication, and two or three on gay panic, this has a cumulative effect," Baxendale said.
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