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Thread: Reginald Dexter Carr, Jr. - Kansas Death Row

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    Reginald Dexter Carr, Jr. - Kansas Death Row


    Jason Befort; Brad Heyka; Aaron Sander; Heather Muller



    Reginald Carr


    Summary of Offense:

    Convicted of capital murder for the December 15, 2000 murders of Jason Befort, Brad Heyka, Heather Muller and Aaron Sander and of first-degree murder (non-capital) for killing Ann Walenta four days before the quadruple murder.

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    May 28, 2009

    Carr brothers’ death appeal coming in June

    It’s been nearly six years since a jury said Reginald and Jonathan Carr should die for the torturing and killing of four people in Wichita during a weeklong crime spree in December of 2000.

    The Supreme Court should begin receiving the Carrs’ appeals by June. That’s when Jonathan Carr’s lawyer said she plans to file his appeal. His brother, Reginald Carr, has an even earlier deadline.

    “This is very comparable to what we’ve had in other cases,” said Rebecca Woodman, who will represent Jonathan Carr’s appeal, on the length of time taken to file the legal papers.

    The Kansas Supreme Court has extended the filing deadline for Reginald Carr 23 times, 19 for Jonathan.

    “Yes, this last extension in Carr is the last,” Woodman said.

    The time includes two years — from 2004 to 2006 — when all death penalty cases were put on hold, after the state’s highest court struck down the death penalty and the 1997 capital murder convictions of Michael Marsh. Marsh’s case went to the U.S. Supreme Court, which eventually restored the Kansas death penalty law.

    Further court battles on the capital appeal of Gavin Scott put Kansas death penalty cases on hold again from January 2007 to May of 2008.

    Marsh’s case was resolved this month — 13 years after the killings — only after the prosecutors decided not to continue pursuing the death penalty. He’s serving life in prison.

    But cases where the death penalty is at stake require a higher standard of legal scrutiny. As the U.S. Supreme Court has said: “death is different.”

    “Non-capital murder cases … do not generally involve the type or number of constitutional issues that are present in death penalty cases,” Woodman said.

    The length of time and expense is why 10 states, including Kansas, have sought to vanquish the death penalty. New Hampshire lawmakers are the latest to abolish capital punishment.

    Death penalty cases not only have to pass the state’s Supreme Court but then must pass scrutiny in federal courts.

    After the Carrs’ first round of arguments are filed this spring, the appeals process could last years.

    No one has been executed in Kansas for 44 years.

    http://blogs.kansas.com/courts/2009/...coming-in-june

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    June 14, 2009

    Reginald Carr's Attorney Files Appeal Brief

    Reginald Carr's appeal brief has officially been filed. The brief is 376 pages long. It brings up 37 points of appeal, which are alleged errors at trial or issues with the legality of certain statutes.

    Read the 37 points of appeal

    http://kwch.images.worldnow.com/imag...arr_appeal.pdf

    Some of the points of appeal include the constitutionality of the Kansas death penalty law, that a change of venue should have been granted, and Reginald should have had a separate trial from co-defendant Jonathan Carr.

    The next step is for the prosecution to file its brief, which they'll have 90 days to complete or file for an extension. The case likely won't be on the docket for oral arguments until at least September.

    Reginald Carr was convicted of killing five people back in 2000. His brother, Jonathan, was convicted of the same crimes.

    Jonathan Carr's appeal brief is due May 26th.

    http://www.kwch.com/Global/story.asp?S=10340898

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    June 14, 2009

    The Carr brothers, 22-year-old Reginald and 20-year-old Jonathan, already had serious criminal records when they began their spree. On December 8, 2000, having recently arrived in Wichita, they committed armed robbery against 23-year-old assistant baseball coach Andrew Schreiber. Three days later, they shot and mortally wounded 55-year-old cellist and librarian Ann Walenta as she tried to escape from them in her car.

    Their crime spree culminated on December 14, when they invaded a home and subjected five young men and women to robbery, sexual abuse, and murder. The brothers broke into a house chosen nearly at random where Brad Heyka, Heather Muller, Aaron Sander, Jason Befort and a young woman identified as 'H.G.', all in their twenties, were spending the night. Initially scouring the house for valuables, they forced their hostages to strip naked, bound and detained them, and subjected them to various forms of sexual humiliation, including rape and sodomy. They also forced the men to engage in sexual acts with the women, and the women with each other. They then drove the victims to ATMs to empty their bank accounts, before finally bringing them to a snowy deserted soccer complex on the outskirts of town and shooting them execution-style in the backs of their heads, leaving them for dead. The Carr brothers then drove Befort's truck over the bodies.

    They returned to the house to ransack it for more valuables. It was then they claimed their final victim, Nikki, H.G.'s muzzled dog who was beaten and stabbed to death.

    H.G. survived (her plastic hairpin having deflected the bullet), after running naked for more than a mile in freezing weather to report the attack and seek medical attention. In a much-remarked point of tragedy, she had seen her boyfriend Befort shot, after having learned of his intention to propose marriage when the Carrs, by chance, discovered the engagement ring hidden in a can of popcorn.

    The Carr brothers, who took few precautions, were captured by the police the next day, and Reginald was identified by Schreiber and the dying Walenta. Law enforcement officials ultimately decided that the Carrs' motive was robbery, despite the other aspects of the crime. The brothers were tried, convicted and sentenced to death in October 2002.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wichita_Massacre

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    State Supreme Court to issue ruling Friday on Carr brothers’ appeals

    After years of legal wrangling, the Kansas Supreme Court is scheduled to issue its opinion Friday on the appeals of convicted Wichita murderers Jonathan and Reginald Carr.

    The decision comes 12 years after the Carr brothers were convicted in one of the most notorious crimes in Wichita history.

    Jonathan Carr, 34, and Reginald Carr, 36, raised dozens of issues in their appeals.

    One of the objections was that the trial court denied the brothers’ motions that they be tried separately.

    During oral arguments conducted at different times on Dec. 17, defense lawyers told the Supreme Court that the brothers should get new, separate trials.

    Public defender Sara Ellen Johnson, Jonathan Carr’s attorney, said that Reginald Carr engaged in courtroom “antics,” turning jurors against both brothers.

    The brothers’ lawyers also contended that a decision by the judge to seat a strongly pro-death-penalty juror – who later became foreman – tainted the trial.

    Sedgwick County prosecutors objected, saying a new trial would result in the same outcome.

    The brothers are also challenging the constitutionality of Kansas’ death penalty.

    They were convicted and sentenced in 2002 for murdering five people during a crime spree in December 2000.

    They were found guilty in the killings of Jason Befort, 26; Brad Heyka, 27; Aaron Sander, 29; and Heather Muller, 25.

    The four were terrorized, robbed, sexually assaulted and kidnapped on Dec. 15, 2000, before being gunned down execution-style; they were forced to kneel in a frozen soccer field near 29th Street North and Greenwich.

    A fifth victim, a 25-year-old woman left for dead after being shot in the head, survived and was able to make her way to a nearby house and call police. A manhunt for the brothers soon began.

    The Carr brothers also were convicted of murdering Ann Walenta, 55, who was shot and mortally wounded Dec. 11, 2000, in an apparent carjacking and robbery.

    Since the convictions, Reginald Carr’s attorneys filed 23 extension requests before filing a written brief in October 2009. Jonathan Carr’s attorneys filed 20 extensions before filing their written brief in September 2009.

    The Sedgwick County District Attorney’s Office filed its brief for Reginald Carr’s appeal in October 2012 after requesting eight extensions. The D.A.’s brief on Jonathan Carr was filed July 2012 after nine extensions.

    The appeals process also stalled because of a legal dispute over the state’s capital punishment law.

    No one has been executed in Kansas since 1965.

    http://www.kansas.com/2014/07/24/356...#storylink=cpy
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

    "Y'all be makin shit up" ~ Markeith Loyd

  6. #6
    Junior Member Newbie loren's Avatar
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    Pretty quick...I was just getting ready to post that!

  7. #7
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    I will not be out news'd! Especially with these two monsters!
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

    "Y'all be makin shit up" ~ Markeith Loyd

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    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    Do you think the hitherto de facto abolitionist Kansas Supreme Court will actually uphold at least one of the two brothers' death sentences?

  9. #9
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    90044 - State v. Reginald Carr video 1, video 2, video 3

    Quote Originally Posted by loren View Post
    Sorry, was trying to beat Heidi
    half-assing it doesn't count!
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

    "Y'all be makin shit up" ~ Markeith Loyd

  10. #10
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    Ten years later, Carr brothers' murders still haunt

    Detective Rick Craig stood at a construction site of what would later be a soccer field in the brisk Kansas cold of December. It was 25 degrees and a 14 mph wind whistled around 3 a.m. on Dec. 15, 2000. Craig shuddered as he walked up the makeshift path to four naked bodies, all lying in the snow with gunshots to the back of the head.

    "I walked up on that and I wasn't cold anymore," Craig said this week.

    A decade later, Sedgwick County District Attorney Nola Foulston still is working on the case of Jonathan and Reginald Carr.

    The Carrs were convicted and sentenced to death in five killings and the assault of a woman who lived to tell about the torture she and her friends endured.

    Foulston's legal brief on the Carrs' appeal of the conviction and the death penalty sat in front of her at her desk on Tuesday. It's due to the Kansas Supreme Court next month.

    Foulston said she still gets a churning feeling in her stomach when she remembers the crimes.

    "My recollection of it is like it was yesterday," she said. "It was the most horrible and frightening experience."

    Wichita awoke that morning to learn of its second quadruple killing in eight days.

    Foulston didn't believe the call she received at home about multiple bodies, just after celebrating her 50th birthday.

    "I said, 'that happened last week,' " Foulston said. "I could still remember being at that house, and seeing what those poor people suffered through."

    The 911 dispatcher said, "No, there's been another."

    Sales of home security systems jumped in those days before Christmas.

    It was a fear based more on the shock of two horrible crimes than a real threat. The Carrs were locked away in jail by noon that same day.

    A week of crime

    Foulston remembered having to tell the parents of Heather Muller what had happened.

    Muller had worked at the law office of Foulston's husband, Steve. Muller's parents couldn't find her that night and had gone to the home where her friends lived, looking for her.

    Muller, 25, was one of those left dead in the field. So were Jason Befort, 26, Aaron Sander, 29, and Brad Heyka, 27.

    Soon, police would piece together two other crimes.

    On Dec. 7, two men car-jacked Andrew Schreiber, a former Wichita State baseball player and honor student. He was forced at gunpoint to drive around east Wichita, withdrawing money from ATMs before being released unharmed. His captors fired a bullet into his car tire.

    On Dec. 11, Ann Walenta, a cellist with the Wichita Symphony, was critically shot during a carjacking attempt. She died of her wounds on Jan. 2, 2001.

    Bullets would tie those crimes to the same gun used to kill the four others.

    Appeal pending


    Death penalty cases get an automatic appeal, and the cases have proven a slippery slope in Kansas.

    The state's highest court has overturned every death penalty case since the state reinstated a law allowing for capital punishment in 1994.

    No one has been executed in Kansas since 1965.

    The death penalty has been put on hold several times during the eight years since a jury convicted the Carrs and condemned them to execution in November 2002.

    That has pushed back deadlines for filing briefs. The Carrs' appellate public defenders filed lengthy arguments early this year.

    The public defenders are arguing that the brothers should have been tried separately instead of together and that the brother who didn't do the shooting shouldn't face death.

    According to the testimony of the surviving woman, the shots came one after another, indicating there was one shooter. Jonathan Carr, his lawyer is arguing, watched his brother kill the four victims, according to the briefs.

    Foulston hopes this will be the first death penalty case that passes the constitutional test.

    "No one is entitled to a perfect trial, only a fair one," Foulston said. "But this came close to being a perfect trial, in terms of legal issues and being resolved and how we went about trying the case."

    Foulston pointed to the jury, which found Jonathan Carr not guilty of Walenta's killing.

    "It shows the jury just didn't write it off — they carefully considered the cases separately," she said.

    Foulston said that care by the jury could be a key factor in upholding the convictions and sentence.

    Getting involved

    As a veteran homicide detective, Craig hopes people remember the crimes as being solved with the help of concerned citizens who weren't afraid to get involved.

    "That's something you don't always get," Craig said.

    When police put out a description of a Dodge pickup, a man spotted it in a Wichita apartment complex and notified police.

    That led to the arrest of Jonathan Carr early that morning.

    When a woman in north Wichita heard a description of the shirt one of the assailants wore, she called police. A man fitting that description — a friend of her daughter — had spent the night at her house.

    Jonathan Carr was still at the house when she called. He ran when he saw police and was arrested after a foot chase through the neighborhood.

    "I wish we had more cases where that happened," Craig said. "Crimes would be solved a lot more quickly and the cases would be stronger."

    The survivors


    The surviving woman was saved by a plastic butterfly hair clip. The bullet to the back of her head shattered the clip, which kept it from killing her.

    The woman played dead and waited for the killers to leave before hiking, naked and bleeding, through the snow to a nearby house for help.

    "If you don't believe in God, you have to ask if He didn't help keep her alive and help her across the field," Craig said.

    Foulston speaks of the case the same way.

    "There was like a divine providence in all of this," she said.

    After the trial, the surviving woman would marry Schreiber, the former WSU baseball player who was also kidnapped by the brothers. They moved from Wichita. Schreiber went to work in law enforcement.

    "Sometimes, I will take a family vacation and go visit them," Craig said.

    "We don't talk about what happened," Craig added. "But I am amazed by her strength. She is so strong. I think she's great. She's an angel."

    http://www.kansas.com/2010/12/15/163...#ixzz18BZIxRAU

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