Facing death penalty, Marvin Gabrion’s appeal rejected in 1997 killing of Rachel Timmerman
By John Agar
mlive.com
GRAND RAPIDS, MI – Marvin Gabrion, Michigan’s only death-row inmate, lost his appeal in the 1997 killing of Rachel Timmerman
The condemned killer challenged a federal judge’s rejection of an appeal that was based on Gabrion’s contention that he was mistreated by the justice system.
Gabrion, 68, has exhausted direct appeals and waged a “collateral attack” in a civil process that alleged constitutional violations in his effort to overturn his first-degree murder conviction or win a new trial.
Chief U.S. District Judge Robert Jonker in October 2018 dismissed Gabrion’s claims that he was wrongfully convicted. Gabrion blamed ineffective assistance of counsel, false or misleading evidence and lying witnesses. His attorneys also presented extraordinary report on four generations of his family’s history in a failed effort to show that he was incompetent.
“At trial, the prosecutor presented overwhelming evidence that Gabrion murdered Timmerman by restraining her with tape, handcuffs, chains, and cinderblocks, and throwing her into Oxford Lake to sink and drown at the location where her body was found,” an appellate panel wrote in a 32-page opinion.
Gabrion is also suspected of killing Timmerman’s 11-month-old daughter, whose body was not found, and three others.
The prosecution said Gabrion killed Timmerman to prevent her from testifying that he had raped her. She disappeared two days before Gabrion was to stand trial in Newaygo County Circuit Court.
Her body was found in early June 1997, about a month after the killing, in the muddy lake in the Manistee National Forest. He faced federal charges, which allow the death penalty, because the killing happened on federal land
Michigan law does not allow the death penalty.
Timmerman was alive when she was put into the muddy, weedy lake from an old, rusted metal boat, the government said.
A jury sentenced Gabrion to death in 2002.
In Gabrion’s earlier direct appeal, the federal appellate court noted “the utter depravity of the manner in which (Gabrion) killed (Timmerman).” The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear that appeal.
Gabrion is held in the Medical Center for Federal Prisoners, or MCFP Springfield, in Springfield, Missouri. He had been held in a federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, where most condemned federal inmates are housed.
Portage attorney Scott Graham, who has represented Gabrion during the appellate process, declined comment.
A federal prosecutor previously said Gabrion’s latest appeal could be his last.
Gabrion is suspected of killing three others: John Weeks, Wayne Davis and Robert Allen.
The government said Gabrion urged Weeks to take Timmerman out to dinner before she and her daughter went missing. Weeks went missing, too. So did Wayne Davis, a witness to the rape, and Robert Allen, a Kent County man with mental disabilities whose Social Security checks were stolen by Gabrion.
A three-judge panel – Alice Batchelder, Karen Nelson Moore and Julia Smith Gibbons – heard the appeal. Nelson Moore concurred with the others “that the overwhelming evidence of Gabrion’s murder of Rachel Timmerman on federal property forecloses his guilty-phase claims.”
But, she said she would have granted Gabrion an evidentiary hearing on his claim of ineffective counsel based on an alleged conflict of interest.
So far, courts have authorized $720,000 in expenses for Gabrion’s legal fight, including $200,000 for investigators and experts. It’s $100,000 higher than the average at the time, the appeals court said.
The Death Penalty Information Center said Gabrion is the only Michigan inmate awaiting the death penalty.
https://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rap...timmerman.html
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