Oklahoma state trooper's killer won't get new sentencing hearing
A man convicted and sentenced to death for the 1999 fatal shooting of an Oklahoma Highway Patrol trooper will not receive a new sentencing hearing, a federal judge has ruled.
U.S. District Judge Ronald A. White, in an opinion and order issued Thursday, found that Kenneth Eugene Barrett’s trial counsel was “deficient” but that Barrett was not “prejudiced by counsel’s performance.”
Barrett, 57, has been seeking a new sentencing in the fatal shooting of David “Rocky” Eales on the grounds that he received ineffective counsel during the sentencing phase of his trial.
Eales and other members of the OHP tactical team were carrying out a no-knock search warrant just after midnight Sept. 24, 1999, in search of methamphetamine at Barrett’s Sequoyah County cabin when they came under fire.
A Muskogee federal court jury convicted Barrett in 2005 of two gun-related counts and of intentionally killing a state law enforcement officer during the commission of a drug trafficking crime.
The jury returned sentences of life in prison without the possibility of parole on the gun charges and a death sentence for the fatal shooting of Eales.
The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2015 ordered that an evidentiary hearing be held in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Oklahoma regarding whether Barrett’s federal trial attorneys were deficient in not investigating Barrett’s background and mental health during the penalty phase of the 2005 trial.
After listening to seven days of testimony in 2017, U.S. Magistrate Steven P. Shreder issued a report recommending that Barrett be granted a new sentencing hearing.
Federal prosecutors objected to the recommendation for a new sentencing hearing, arguing in court filings that evidence presented on Barrett’s behalf would not have affected the outcome of the trial.
The government did not object to the magistrate’s finding that Barrett’s trial counsel was constitutionally deficient in developing a mitigation strategy during the sentencing portion of the trial.
Evidence presented on behalf of Barrett during the 2017 evidentiary hearing indicated that he is bipolar, has had auditory hallucinations, has a history of brain trauma and has a family history of mental health issues going back several generations.
In his ruling Friday, White noted that while the magistrate found that Barrett had a family history of mental health problems, violence and alcohol abuse, that didn’t “offer any compelling mitigation evidence when weighed against the evidence that the jury heard regarding the petitioner’s cold-blooded and premeditated killing of a state law enforcement officer engaged in the performance of his official duties.”
“Simply because (Barrett) was able to obtain experts who described (him) as having mental health disorders so severe that he could not have rationally assisted his attorneys in the preparation of his defense, does not mean the jury would have given much weight to that testimony in light of the evidence it heard over the course of the entire trial,” White wrote.
Attorneys for Barrett and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Muskogee could not be reached for comment Friday.
Barrett was initially tried in state court on charges related to the fatal shooting of Eales.
Barrett’s 1st state court trial resulted in a hung jury.
In the 2nd state trial, Barrett again faced murder and shooting-with-intent-to-kill charges in Sequoyah County District Court, but jurors returned guilty verdicts in February 2004 on lesser offenses of 1st-degree manslaughter and assault and battery with a dangerous weapon.
(source: The Purcell Register)
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