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Thread: Kenneth Simmons - South Carolina

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    Kenneth Simmons - South Carolina




    Summary of Offense:

    Was sentenced to die on March 2, 1999 for raping and killing 87-year-old Lily Bell Boyd in Dorchester County on September 1, 1996.

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    On June 14, 2004, Simmons' death sentence was affirmed by the South Carolina Supreme Court on direct appeal.

    https://www.judicial.state.sc.us/opi...s/SC/25838.htm

    On January 24, 2005, the US Supreme Court denied Simmons' certiorari petition.

    http://www.supremecourt.gov/Search.a...es/04-7210.htm

    On September 2, 2005, Simmons filed an application for post-conviction relief in Dorchester County Circuit Court.

    http://publicindex.sccourts.org/dorc...368&CaseType=V

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    Kenneth Simmons, 53, who had been sentenced to death in Dorchester County in 1999, was resentenced to life without parole after a higher court ruled he should not be executed because he is mentally challenged.

    The state is appealing the court's decision. Depending on the outcome in the appeal, Simmons could wind up before a Dorchester County jury for resentencing.

    Simmons was convicted of murder in the Sept. 1, 1996, robbery, rape, torture and killing of 87-year-old Lily Bell Boyd in her Summerville home.

    In a taped confession, Simmons told police that he had been smoking crack cocaine and drinking beer for hours before he rode a bicycle to Boyd's West Luke Street home and robbed her to buy more crack.

    After Boyd gave him cash, Simmons beat her with a stick he found on her porch, then raped and strangled her.

    Her body was found in the kitchen later that Sunday. Boyd had been gagged and beaten bloody, her wrists and feet bound and her ribs fractured in 14 places.

    http://www.postandcourier.com/articl...th-row-inmates

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    DNA challenge of conviction in Summerville rape, murder continues after Supreme Court ruling

    A rare S.C. Supreme Court ruling Wednesday means a convicted killer can continue his bid for a new trial in the 1996 murder and rape of an 87-year-old Summerville woman.

    Three years after Lily Bell Boyd was robbed, tortured and slain in her home, Kenneth Simmons was convicted and sentenced to death. The penalty, though, was ultimately converted to a lifetime prison term when courts decided that mentally challenged people like Simmons could not be executed.

    The 55-year-old prisoner’s latest bid to overturn his conviction now lies in how prosecutors and witnesses at his trial in Dorchester County overstated the value of DNA evidence tying him to the crime.

    Simmons mounted this challenge through a post-conviction relief, or PCR, action. In court hearings, witnesses for Simmons testified that the connection between his DNA and semen found at the scene was “far weaker than the state had claimed at trial,” the Supreme Court ruling stated. While prosecutors said that it was impossible for the DNA to have come from anyone else, the testing proved less conclusive and was poorly documented.

    Though the lower court vacated Simmons’ death sentence, it rejected his arguments about the DNA without offering an explanation. Simmons didn’t immediately ask for the court to reconsider that ruling.

    In what they called an “extraordinary action ... reserved for the rarest of cases,” the five Supreme Court justices on Wednesday allowed Simmons to revive the DNA challenge. Their opinion asks the lower court to issue an order explaining why it rejected the DNA argument in the first place. Such an order would allow Simmons to further challenge his conviction.

    But the high court declined to grant Simmons a new trial outright.

    “In striking this difficult balance, we believe a remand is in the best interests of justice,” Justice John Kittredge wrote in the opinion. “And finally, because of the growing knowledge of science as it relates to DNA, we grant the PCR court discretion to permit additional evidence.”

    It’s unclear when the lower court will take up the issue again.

    The Supreme Court made its ruling while noting that Simmons had also confessed to Boyd’s slaying.

    In a taped statement, he told police that he had been smoking crack cocaine and drinking beer before he went to Boyd’s West Luke Street home and robbed her to buy more drugs.

    After Boyd gave him cash, Simmons beat her with a stick, then bound, gagged, raped and strangled her. Her ribs were broken in 14 places.

    “This was a brutal and horrific murder,” Kittredge wrote in the order, “a fact that does not escape us.”

    http://www.postandcourier.com/201606...e-court-ruling

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