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Thread: Dewey Eugene Coleman - Montana

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    Dewey Eugene Coleman - Montana






    January 20, 1988

    Montana Black Man's Death Sentence Splits U.S. Court


    By Kim Murphy
    The Los Angeles Times

    A divided federal appeals court on Tuesday upheld the death sentence of a black man convicted of raping and killing a Montana school teacher, even though a dissenting judge insisted that Dewey E. Coleman "in all likelihood would not be facing execution if he were white."

    In one of the most sweeping opinions the court has rendered on capital punishment, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the right of prosecutors to reject Coleman's guilty plea to lesser charges while accepting an identical plea that saved the life of Coleman's white co-defendant.

    The court also rejected arguments from Coleman's lawyers that prosecutors had the burden of disproving that Coleman's strong record of community service and lack of any prior criminal background weighed heavily enough to mitigate against imposition of the death penalty.

    Coleman is the only black prisoner on Montana's Death Row. He and Robert Dennis Nank were charged in the rape, beating and eventual drowning of 21-year-old Peggy Lee Harstad, who disappeared while driving alone from Harlowton to Rosebud in Montana on July 4, 1974.

    Nank pleaded guilty to deliberate homicide and solicitation to commit sexual intercourse, charges which do not carry the death penalty, and testified against Coleman. Coleman attempted to negotiate a similar deal, but prosecutors rejected his offer and brought him to trial.

    The decision was based in part on Coleman's early assertions of his innocence and in part on Nank's testimony that it was Coleman who initiated the murder.

    The 63-page majority opinion and 120-page dissent represent the widest-ranging discussion of the death penalty in recent years for the 9th Circuit, which is bracing for a flood of death penalty cases this year as appeals begin moving up from the lower courts in the West.

    As of late last year, there were 300 inmates on Death Row in the 9th Circuit, which acts as the intermediate appeals court for the nine westernmost states. A total of 44 inmates are expected to bring federal death penalty appeals through the court this year.

    The opinion in the Coleman case did not appear to break any new legal ground, but the case did provide a focus point for a broad range of issues that are likely to arise in future death penalty appeals: race discrimination, the burden of proof in considering aggravating and mitigating factors of an offense, how prior offenses with which a defendant has not been charged should influence sentencing, and the latitude that prosecutors may exercise in accepting plea bargains when a defendant's life may hinge on the outcome.

    In a sharply worded dissent, Los Angeles Judge Stephen Reinhardt asserted that Coleman's sentencing hearing "was little more than a sham and would hardly have been adequate were the issue whether a Little Leaguer should be suspended for one game."

    Montana officials, Reinhardt said, are "planning to hang Dewey Coleman, a black man who in all likelihood would not be facing execution if he were white." Reinhardt called the decision not to allow Coleman to enter a plea bargain similar to Nank's "entirely arbitrary and meritless . . . (which has) every appearance of being pretextual."

    'This Black Boy'


    But the court majority, in an opinion written by Judge David R. Thompson with the concurrence of Judge Arthur L. Alarcon, said there was no evidence of racial prejudice in the trial record, even when the trial judge referred to Coleman as "this black boy."

    Noting the "wide discretion" that prosecutors have traditionally exercised in deciding whether to seek the death penalty or accept a plea bargain, the court majority concluded that prosecutors had no obligation to accept Coleman's offer to plead guilty.

    The court itself, the judges held, has no authority to second-guess prosecutors' decisions on plea bargains without a clear finding that a defendant's constitutional rights had been violated. The majority said it could make no clear finding of racial prejudice in Coleman's case, but Reinhardt disagreed.

    "Under these circumstances, the prosecution's motivations are, at the very least, highly suspect," Reinhardt countered. "A black defendant received life or death treatment unequal to that received by his similarly situated white co-defendant. The prosecution offered frivolous and inconsistent explanations for that difference in treatment. When the trial judge would patiently point out legal errors in their explanations, the prosecutors would switch grounds and try to put an end to the plea bargaining.

    One Consistency

    "The prosecutors were consistent in only one respect. They were unyielding in their determination to try the black defendant on capital charges and then execute him," Reinhardt said.

    Discrimination, Reinhardt said, "still exists but it has become more difficult to recognize. Proof no longer comes wrapped in nice little packages with red ribbons and tinkling bells."

    Another key issue in the case was Coleman's contention that his rights were violated when he was sentenced under a new Montana death penalty statute adopted after the first statute, under which he was originally sentenced, was declared unconstitutional.

    The court majority rejected that argument, ruling that the new law "did not change 'the rules of the game.' "

    The court also rejected Coleman's lawyers' claims that prosecutors had the burden of disproving the existence of mitigating circumstances--including his lack of any prior criminal record and his active work on behalf of a community action group--before the death penalty could be imposed.

    No Requirement

    Even though the trial judge did not make any specific findings that he had taken such factors into consideration--other than a blanket statement that he had read the presentence probation report--there is nothing in the law that requires the court to do so, the majority held.

    Henry T. Greely, a Stanford University law professor who handled Coleman's appeal, said it is likely he will seek a rehearing of the case before a full 11-member panel of the court.

    Pat Schaeffer, Montana's assistant attorney general, said she could not comment on the opinion because she had not seen it, but said there was never any evidence of racial discrimination in the handling of Coleman's case.

    http://articles.latimes.com/1988-01-..._death-penalty

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    Former death row inmate Coleman dies in Lewistown Infirmary

    Montana State Prison inmate Dewey Eugene Coleman died on Sunday at the Lewistown Infirmary of natural causes, according to a news release from the Montana Department of Corrections. He was 67.

    Coleman was sentenced out of Rosebud County on Nov. 21, 1975.

    On July 4, 1974, 21-year-old Peggy Lee Harstad went missing. Her car was found the next day, abandoned just a few miles from her home in Rosebud. Her purse was found in a culvert a few more miles away, according to stories in the Gazette archives.

    Harstad was driving between Rosebud and Harlowton when she offered a ride to two hitchhikers, later identified as Dewey Eugene Coleman and Robert Dennis Nank. Her body was discovered in late August on the north bank of the Yellowstone River near Forsyth.

    Nank and Coleman were arrested in October 1974 in Boise. Nank confessed that he and Coleman had raped, beaten and drowned Harstad, while Coleman denied that he was involved. Both were charged with deliberate homicide, aggravated kidnapping and rape.

    At the time, a conviction of aggravated kidnapping had a mandatory death sentence attached, but that law was repealed in 1977.

    Nank entered a plea agreement, allowing him to have the kidnapping charges dropped, avoiding the death penalty, in exchange for testifying against Coleman. Coleman was convicted on all three counts, and was sentenced to 100 years for the homicide and 40 years for the rape charge. For the kidnapping, he received the mandatory death sentence, Gazette archives show.

    Nank later escaped from the Nevada prison in which he was being held in 1981, along with three other convicted murderers. He had been transferred to the prison from Deer Lodge out of fear of retribution for testifying against Coleman.

    Coleman appealed the sentence, and the Montana Supreme Court determined the mandatory death sentence to be unconstitutional. Coleman was again sentenced to death in 1978 under a new statute.

    The execution was scheduled for late November of 1981. Though no executions had been carried out in Montana for more than 39 years, the primary means of execution was still hanging. However, Montana State Prison Warden Hank Risley had the prison's gallows removed, stating that he didn't want his institution to carry out executions. Yellowstone County Sheriff Richard Shaffer took matters into his own hands, secretly constructing a gallows over a stairwell on the ninth floor of the Yellowstone County Courthouse.

    Just days before the hanging was to take place, Coleman was granted a stay of execution.

    Coleman later argued that his death sentence was handed down because he was black, and that Nank was given preferential treatment because he was white.

    The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Coleman in 1988, commuting his death sentence to life imprisonment.

    Coleman was to be eligible for parole this year, though a previous hearing with the Montana Board of Pardons and Parole in 2011 did not go in his favor.

    http://billingsgazette.com/news/loca...c6192a4b9.html

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    Mother of victim finds closure after former death row inmate dies in DOC infirmary

    Montana State Prison inmate Dewey Eugene Coleman died on Sunday at the Lewistown Infirmary of natural causes, according to a news release from the Montana Department of Corrections. He was 67.

    Coleman was on death row for almost 15 years before his sentence was commuted to life in prison.

    “I’m not sending flowers,” said Eleanor Harstad Neurohr on Monday. Neurohr is the mother of Peggy Lee Harstad, the woman Coleman was convicted of killing in 1974.

    On July 4, 1974, Harstad, 21, was returning home to Rosebud from a Fourth of July rodeo in Harlowton. She was spending the summer at her family’s farm before beginning her teaching career in Plains.

    On the drive, her path crossed Dewey Eugene Coleman and Robert Dennis Nank. The two had been riding a motorcycle through Montana after leaving a veterans' hospital in Wyoming, where they had been treated for medical issues related to mental health. Their motorcycle had broken down and were stopping vehicles asking for assistance.

    When Harstad came upon the two men, they took control of her vehicle, a light-green car with a white-and-green checkerboard top. A friend had brought the car back from California for Harstad, Neurohr said.

    The men drove Harstad to a secluded area where they bound and sexually assaulted her; Nank later stated he was impotent at the time and did not succeed in assaulting Harstad. They drove with Harstad a little longer before they allowed her to get dressed again and then killed her by holding her down in the Yellowstone River until she drowned.

    The next day, Neurohr drove to the Harstad family ranch outside Forsyth into town to grab coffee with friends and run errands. As she headed into town, she saw the unmistakable checkered top of her daughter’s car. She thought it was unusual to see a car so similar to her daughter’s, but believed it was a road worker’s. She was at a cafe when a call came in to the business; John Harstad, Peggy Harstad’s father, was on the line.

    “He asked me if I knew where Peggy was, and I said, 'Yes, I think she’s at a girlfriend’s house or maybe with Lynda, her sister,'" Neurohr said in an interview with the Gazette on Monday. “And John said, ‘Well, a car with her license plate was found parked along Frontage Road.'"

    Neurohr and her husband saw their daughter everywhere after that. The whole town rallied to help them find her. They even called in a Native American clairvoyant from Hardin who stayed at the Harstad ranch. Neurohr still credits the woman with pointing the family to the area on the Yellowstone River where Harstad’s body was found.

    “Peggy was right across from where she said she would be,” Neurohr said. “Two fisherman found her, and I remember, it had rained a lot that year, so the river was very high, and Coleman and Nank hadn’t put Peggy in the main stream, so, when the water receded, the two fisherman saw her body.”

    Her body was discovered in late August 1974 on the north bank of the Yellowstone River near Forsyth.

    “They wouldn’t let me see her,” Neurohr said. “I wanted so badly to see her.”

    The night before Peggy Harstad's death, she kissed both her parents and thanked them for all they’d done for her.

    “She was kind, a loving, good-natured person,” Neurohr said. When Harstad would come home from college, her sister Lynda Ottun would walk over from where she and her husband lived, and the three women would visit in the kitchen together. The girls would sit together on the counters laughing and chatting while Neurohr prepared dinner or lunch, Neurohr said.

    “I miss that,” Neurohr said. After Peggy Harstad’s death, Neurohr said she could never again get close to her older daughter.

    “Sometimes I wish I’d asked her, talked to her about it,” Neurohr said. “But we were all hurting, hurting so deeply.”

    Nank and Coleman were arrested in October 1974 in Boise. Nank entered a plea agreement to avoid the death penalty, in exchange for testifying against Coleman. Nank confessed that he and Coleman had raped, beaten and drowned Harstad, while Coleman denied that he was involved. Both were charged with deliberate homicide, aggravated kidnapping and rape, according to Gazette archives.

    Nank died in 1999 according to Montana State Death Records.

    Coleman was convicted and sentenced to 100 years for the homicide and 40 years for the rape charge. He received the death sentence for his conviction of aggravated kidnapping, a mandatory sentence at the time. That law was repealed in 1977.

    Coleman appealed his sentence, and the Montana Supreme Court determined the mandatory death sentence to be unconstitutional. Coleman was again sentenced to death in 1978 under a new statute.

    Just days before the hanging was to take place, Coleman was granted a stay of execution.

    Coleman later argued that his death sentence was handed down because he was black, and that Nank was given preferential treatment because he was white.

    The two men are interchangeable to Neurohr, who said the death penalty wasn’t good enough for either.

    “My daughter suffered at their hands,” Neurohr said. “They should suffer. That was my hate talking at the time, but I still feel what they got was far too plush.”

    Both men pointed the finger at the other after the death of her daughter, but both could have stopped it, she said.

    “Killing my daughter, through that, I lost my husband,” Neurohr said. John Harstad died from a heart attack in 1989, a month after an interview with the Gazette about his daughter's death, in which he remarked on the overwhelming support from the community. "It was just all too late," he had said of their efforts.

    The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Coleman in 1988, commuting his death sentence to life imprisonment.

    Neurohr is the last surviving member of Peggy Harstad’s direct family. Her sister, Lynda Ottun, died from cancer in 2005. Her adoptive brother, Rowland Limberhand Harstad, died in 2009 from a heart attack. The youngest brother, Monte Harstad, died in 2013, also following a battle with cancer.

    “Monte always thought he should have been with her,” Neurohr said. “Even though he was just a little tyke, he thought, maybe if he’d been with her, she would have come home.”

    In May 1974, a few months before Harstad was killed, she told her mother where she wanted to be buried when she died. She pointed to a big hill where she used to ride her horse, Neurohr said. From the top, she could see the family’s entire ranch.

    “I remember I told her, ‘Peggy, we’re not going to talk about it, we’re not going to think about it,” Neurohr said. "'Parents don’t bury their children.'"

    Coleman would have been eligible for parole this year. A previous hearing with the Montana Board of Pardons and Parole in 2011 did not go in his favor.

    “I’m happy about it,” Neurohr said of Coleman's death. “But there’s closure, it gives you a feeling, I can’t really explain the feeling, it has all come to the end.”

    http://billingsgazette.com/news/loca...c6192a4b9.html
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