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Thread: David Michael Barnett (aka David Michael Castaldi) - Missouri

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    David Michael Barnett (aka David Michael Castaldi) - Missouri




    Summary of Offense:

    During January and the first few days of February 1996, David Barnett had been living with friends in the Glendale area. He had spoken several times to his friends about his grandparent’s car, a 1995 Dodge Intrepid, and had told them that his grandparents were going to rent this car to him. About 8:00 a.m. on Sunday, February 4, 1996, Barnett walked to the home of his grandparents, who were away attending Sunday school and church services at the Kirkwood Baptist church. Barnett entered the home, apparently through a bedroom window, sat down on the couch, turned on the television, and soon fell asleep. When he awoke, he phoned his stepbrother Scott and boasted that he had just won the lottery last night and had suddenly come into a large sum of money. Barnett was waiting for his grandparents when they returned home around 1:00 p.m.

    He confronted his grandmother and pushed her down in the hallway. He then pushed his grandfather to the floor and grabbed a knife that was lying on the nearby kitchen table. As his grandfather rose from the floor, Barnett kicked him in the head, and when he fell to the floor again, Barnett stabbed him repeatedly in the neck area. All told, Barnett inflicted ten stab wounds and numerous cuts to his grandfather’s neck, face, and hands. Satisfied that he had killed his grandfather, Barnett returned to the kitchen to get another knife and then began stabbing his grandmother in her neck as well. Once again, Barnett returned to the kitchen to get more knives. This time he retrieved two knives with which he continued to stab his grandmother until she, too, was killed. She suffered a total of 12 stab wounds to her neck and numerous cuts to her face.

    After the attack, Barnett concealed one of the knives by placing it between two mattress pads in his grandparent’s bedroom. Next, he went to the bathroom and washed the blood off his hands. He then removed the keys to the 1995 Dodge Intrepid that were dangling from the lock in the back door, retrieved his coat, and took approximately 120 dollars from his grandmother’s purse. Before leaving the house, Barnett stood silently next to his victims to hear if they were still breathing. After determining that his victims were dead, Barnett lowered two of the shades in the house, locked up, and drove off in the victims’ car. Early the next morning, police officers found the victims’ car parked in a residential area of Glendale. Barnett walked up to the uniformed officers and confessed that he had committed the murders.

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    Inmate Personal Information

    DOB: 05/18/1976
    Race: White
    Gender: Male

    Crime and Trial Information

    * County of conviction: St. Louis
    * Number of counts: Two
    * Race of Victims: White/White
    * Gender of Victims: Male/Female
    * Date of crime: 02/04/1996
    * Date of Sentencing: 05/02/1997

    Legal Status

    Current Proceedings:
    Post certiorari, Collateral Litigation

    Attorneys

    Elizabeth Carlyle
    Richard Sindel
    John William Simon

    Court Opinions

    State v. Barnett, 980 S.W. 2d 297 (Mo. banc 1998), cert. denied, 525 U.S. 1161 (1999); Barnett v. State, 103 S.W.3d 765 (Mo. banc) (affirming denial of post‐conviction relief), cert. denied, 540 U.S. 862 (2003); Barnett v. Roper, 2006 WL 2475036 (E.D. Mo. 2006) (denying habeas corpus); Barnett v. Roper, 541 F.3d 804 (8th Cir. 2008), cert. denied, 130 S.Ct. 63 (2009).

    Legal Issues

    On habeas appeal:
    1. whether the prosecutor's use of all 11 of his peremptory strikes against prospective female jurors violated the Equal Protection Clause; and
    2. whether the state forfeited its claim that habeas petition was barred by the statute of limitations

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    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    Attorney General Koster requests Supreme Court action in nine capital murder cases

    Jefferson City, MO. – Attorney General Chris Koster submitted for filing similar versions of the attached motion in the Missouri Supreme Court today regarding the following capital murder cases:

    State v. David Barnett
    State v. Cecil Clayton
    State v. Andre Cole
    State v. Paul Goodwin
    State v. Herbert Smulls
    State v. Walter Storey
    State v. Leon Taylor
    State v. Michael Worthington
    State v. David Zink

    The Attorney General is requesting these dates to fulfill the sentences handed down by the courts and ensure that justice is served. Attorney General Koster’s motions indicate that no legal impediments remain for the Supreme Court to set execution dates.

    http://ago.mo.gov/newsreleases/2012/..._murder_cases/

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    Supreme Court gives four condemned inmates chance to argue against setting of execution dates

    By Mike Lear
    missourinet.com

    The state Supreme Court has issued orders to four men sentenced to death to have presented to the Court their arguments why it shouldn’t set dates for their executions. The state Supreme Court has issued show cause orders to Roderick Nunley, Michael Taylor, Jeffrey Ferguson and David Barnett.

    Nunley and Taylor both pleaded guilty to first-degree murder for the 1989 killing of 15-year-old Ann Harrison after abducting her from the Kansas City bus stop where she was waiting to go to school. Taylor had raped the girl with Nunley’s help in the basement of Nunley’s mother’s home, before fatally stabbing her and abandoning her body in the trunk of a car.

    Ferguson was convicted of first-degree murder for killing 17-year-old Kelli Hall, who he and another man had abducted from the St. Charles gas station she was working at in 1989.

    David Barnett stabbed each of his grandparents more than 10 times at their Glendale home before stealing their car and 120-dollars in cash.

    The orders signed by Chief Justice Mary Rhodes Russell mean those mens’ attorneys must present arguments why the Supreme Court should not set dates for their executions by January 10.

    One execution is already scheduled for January 29 for Herbert Smulls, convicted of the the 1991 murder of a Chesterfield jeweler.

    http://www.missourinet.com/2013/12/3...ecution-dates/

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    Moderator Ryan's Avatar
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    Death sentence vacated for Missouri man who killed grandparents

    A federal judge struck down Tuesday the death sentence of a man who killed his grandparents in 1996.

    The judge ruled David Barnett’s trial attorneys didn’t present enough evidence about what he endured as a child before he stabbed 82-year-old Clifford Barnett and his 75-year-old wife, Leona, at their home in Glendale.

    Barnett, 39, murdered the couple after taking their car and 120-dollars.

    U.S. District Judge E. Richard Webber said Barnett’s attorneys should have presented during the sentencing phase of the trial evidence that Barnett was sexually abused by one man while his real father was a violent alcoholic, and that his mother attempted more than once to abandon him, once giving him to a suicidal prostitute.

    Attorney General Chris Koster could appeal the decision, or prosecutors could file an attempt in the next 180 days to seek another death sentence. Otherwise, Barnett would remain in prison for life without a chance for parole.

    http://www.missourinet.com/category/death-penalty/

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    Juror who voted to execute Glendale killer now hopes for mercy

    CLAYTON • Eighteen years ago, Andrew Dazey thought David Barnett’s murder of his grandparents in Glendale was so heinous that he and 11 other jurors voted to put Barnett to death.

    But a federal judge overturned the sentence in August. If the state’s appeal of that order fails, it will leave prosecutors to decide whether to settle for a life term or seek a new hearing to try again for an execution.

    U.S. District Judge E. Richard Webber wrote that although some of the evidence about Barnett’s difficult past had been presented at his murder trial, “horrors,” including sexual abuse, were missed.

    Webber reasoned that “at least one juror would have determined the balance of aggravating and mitigating circumstances did not warrant death in Mr. Barnett’s case.”

    Dazey would have been that juror.

    “David should not be on death row,” said the former jury foreman in a recent interview. “There’s no way” he would vote for death, knowing what he now knows, he explained.

    Dazey, now 63, said that he was “very, very comfortable” with what the jury did at the time. Even as recently as 2013, Dazey wrote to Barnett in prison, telling him that although he thought of Barnett and prayed for the condemned man, his actions had been “reprehensible.”

    But after reading Webber’s opinion, Dazey believes that the majority of jurors would have decided differently “had a fraction of this information been available.”

    That part remains unknown.

    Juror James Chickos said he had not reviewed Webber’s ruling in detail. “I don’t know if I would have changed my mind,” he said. “I’m glad that the federal judge did what he did. It certainly could have made a difference.”

    Another juror declined to review the new data, saying that she had needed therapy after the trial. The others either could not be reached or didn’t respond to messages.

    St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch’s office referred questions to Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster’s office, which has filed the appeal of Webber’s ruling.

    Koster’s office declined to comment.

    FIVE DIFFERENT KNIVES

    On Feb. 4, 1996, Barnett, then 39, used five knives to stab Clifford Barnett, 82, and Leona Barnett, 75, more than 20 times. He broke into their home and waited for them to return from church and brunch. They were his adoptive father’s parents.

    Barnett then stole their car and $120 in cash.

    The next morning, he confessed and later even re-enacted the crime for investigators.

    After his conviction on two counts of first-degree murder, his attorneys argued for leniency in the penalty phase, saying he had suffered from depression, bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder from a troubled and unstable childhood. Barnett had mulled suicide at 8 and again at 15, and later overdosed on prescription drugs and once set himself on fire.

    Prosecutors cited aggravating factors, including that Barnett had murdered for money and the crime was “outrageously vile.”

    After deliberating for 16 hours over two days, jurors voted for death. They found aggravating circumstances, including that the killings were “unreasonably brutal,” that he “committed repeated and excessive acts of physical abuse” on each grandparent, and that each murder took place while Barnett was committing other crimes, Webber’s ruling says.

    TRIAL FAILURES

    Barnett’s current attorneys have long argued that Dazey and other jurors should have been presented in the penalty phase of the trial with more evidence to mitigate the severity of his crime.

    Barnett’s 1999 appeal did not detail the witnesses who should have been called. It was a failure that would dog him through years of unsuccessful appeals.

    In 2012, his attorneys appealed again, citing a new U.S. Supreme Court ruling. Again, they were turned down.

    But Barnett’s attorneys asked Webber to reconsider and he did, triggering nine days of hearings in August and September of 2014.

    “The increased quantity and detail of the evidence presented before this Court cannot be ignored, as they are directly relevant in determining how much the scales would likely have shifted in favor of Mr. Barnett in the eyes of the jury,” Webber wrote in his opinion a year later. He called the sexual abuse allegations “powerful evidence” for the jury to weigh.

    Dazey said the jury had heard some claims about physical and sexual abuse.

    But with more time and more people to work on the case, Barnett’s appellate lawyers had found his biological father, and new information about alleged physical and sexual abuse.

    Jurors didn’t hear 11 witnesses with “critically important (and potentially juror-persuading) evidence,” including Barnett’s mother, Shirley Pullen Acree, the judge noted.

    During her pregnancy, Acree allegedly drank and took diet pills so she could stay awake and “party” more.

    She would have left the newborn Barnett in the hospital had her friend not intervened, and repeatedly gave him away — once to a suicidal, drug-addicted prostitute with the nickname “Crazy Jane,” and several times to the boyfriend of the sister of a friend, according to testimony.

    That man was a mean, violent alcoholic, court testimony said. In his care, Barnett recalled being touched sexually by female house guests, having his nose smashed in by someone and having someone pour dishwashing liquid down his throat.

    At age 5, Barnett was taken away and shuffled through a series of foster homes before being adopted by the son of his eventual victims. There were new allegations of abuse by a relative, who in a recent brief interview with the Post-Dispatch denied it.

    Said Dazey, the juror: “I have never read where there was so much rejection in one life.”

    He also said, “If this wasn’t a case I was involved in, I would have thought it was a fiction novel. Everybody failed to recognize what was going on here.”

    MOVING FORWARD

    The attorney general’s office has focused on the technical aspects of Barnett’s case, rules and procedures, not the abuse.

    The state said Barnett’s time to appeal had expired, and complained that Webber’s overturning of the sentence was a “novel proposition” unsupported by the law. They also raised concerns about a flood of state and federal prisoners launching new appeals using the same grounds.

    Defense attorney Richard Sindel hopes that Dazey can influence politicians to change their minds about pursuing a fresh penalty hearing.

    “We’re hopeful that anyone who could have a decision in the process would be willing to look at what the jurors thought,” he said.

    Sindel said information from Dazey is compelling, as only jurors would know what had happened in their deliberations.

    He also said that Barnett “is a totally different human being than he was when he went in.”

    http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/c...ddc1a81e5.html

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    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    On February 24, 2016, the State of Missouri filed an appeal before the US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.

    https://dockets.justia.com/docket/ci...ts/ca8/16-1467

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    On January 12, 2017, oral argument will be heard in the State of Missouri's appeal before the Eighth Circuit. The panel will be made up of Judges Wollman (Reagan), Murphy (Clinton) and Melloy (G.W. Bush).

    http://media.ca8.uscourts.gov/webcal/jan17stl.pdf

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    On March 15, 2018, oral argument will be heard in Barnett's appeal before the Eighth Circuit. The panel will be made up of Judges Wollman (Reagan), Shepherd (G.W. Bush) and Erickson (Trump).

    http://media.ca8.uscourts.gov/webcal/mar18stl.pdf

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    In today's opinions, the Eight Circuit DENIED the State of Missouri's appeal.

    http://media.ca8.uscourts.gov/opndir/18/09/161467P.pdf

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