The ¶¶Òõh Supreme Court on Tuesday once again heard arguments over the fate of , a death row prisoner who won a brief reprieve last year from his conviction and sentence, only for the court to , then agree afterward to reconsider once more.
Darrell James Robinson.
The seven justices sparred as they questioned Robinson's lawyer and capital prosecutor Hugo Holland over the evidence from a brutal 1996 quadruple murder in Rapides Parish, and allegations that prosecutors hid a deal with a jailhouse informant for leniency in exchange for his testimony.Ìý
It was the third time in the last few years that Robinson's state challenge has landed with the ¶¶Òõh Supreme Court, the result of an unheard-of waffling in a criminal case by the high court.Ìý
The decision in Robinson's case has taken on added urgency now that Louisian has resumed executing people after 15 years with the by nitrogen gas. Holland, a roving death penalty specialist, flashed a photo of Hoffman to the seven justices as he argued for the court to close the book on Robinson's state challenge.
"Darrell Robinson has had multiple bites of the apple, and Jessie Hoffman is not breathing anymore," Holland said, by way of contrast.
The court's decision late last year to reinstate Robinson's convictions and death sentence marked a win for Rapides Parish District Attorney Phillip Terrell’s office, which argued that the previous court majority had it wrong when it vacated the conviction and death sentence.
A unanimous jury convicted Robinson for the execution-style slayings of Billy Lambert, 50; his sister, Carol Hooper, 54; her daughter, Maureen Kelley, 37; and Kelley's infant son, Nicholas Kelley.
Robinson and Billy Lambert had met at a Veterans Administration treatment center for alcoholism, and Robinson came to live with Lambert near the town of Poland eight days before the murders. A witness said Robinson started drinking again, and Lambert wanted him out. On May 28, 1996, a cousin found the four relatives fatally shot in the head on the living-room floor.
Robinson was seen fleeing the scene in Lambert’s truck and ran cars off the road. Police found Lambert’s knife in his pocket and the dead baby’s blood on the bottom of a shoe and on a shoelace.
Justice Will Crain focused on those details and others at Tuesday's hearing, as he suggested the circumstantial evidence against Robinson was particularly strong, including stains from the baby's blood on a shoe.
Robinson has maintained his innocence, claiming he came upon the scene, tromped through it and was miscast as the killer after fleeing in fear. His attorneys argue that the blood evidence points to an alternate suspect.
In January, a majority of the court agreed that Robinson deserved a new trial in an opinion by Chief Justice John Weimer, who found DNA testing supported Robinson’s defense. Weimer pointed to a withheld serology report and notes, in addition to the alleged deal with the informant, Leroy Goodspeed.
Goodspeed scored a break on a charge in a different parish afterward, among other relief, said Robinson's attorney, Matilde Carbia of the Mwalimu Center for Justice. A prosecutor had told the jury that for his testimony, Goodspeed "was not given anything. He was not offered anything. He did not ask for anything.â€
The court majority in January found too many failures by the state to uphold the results. But that decision was soon reversed, with Justice Jay McCallum dwelling in his opinion on the suffering of the victims, while disputing evidence of a deal with Goodspeed.
McCallum and Crain were among the justices who suggested that Goodspeed's testimony wasn't needed to convict Robinson, arguing that the evidence placed Robinson at the scene and that his flight reflected on his guilt.
"The blood from the infant puts him at the scene," Crain said.
"He was in a very close proximity," McCallum added.
Holland argued that the evidence placed Robinson there while the victims were "actively dying," but Carbia disputed that. Robinson didn't deny he was there.
The evidence "does not identify him as the perpetrator, and it does not put him there at the time of the offense," Carbia said.
She described Goodspeed's testimony against Robinson as the "linchpin" of the murder case, and Justice John Michael Guidry seemed to agree as he described "all of this favorable treatment evidenced in the record."
Goodspeed is now dead, and Crain suggested it could hamstring prosecutors in a retrial. Crain said he worried that granting Robinson relief "would put him from death row back onto Main Street."
Carbia asked the court to consider two recent federal court decisions related to withheld information about star witnesses that appeared to bolster the law around disclosing evidence.
Holland said there was "no evidence the state entered into a deal with Goodspeed before trial." He argued that if the court finds as much, it would be calling out several prosecutors and others as liars.
Holland claimed the prosecution never needed Goodspeed.
"If Goodspeed doesn't exist, I think Robinson still gets convicted," he said.
McCallum seemed to agree on Tuesday, telling Holland, "You get in trouble for doing too much."
When the court will rule in Robinson's case is uncertain.
He remains among 54 prisoners on ¶¶Òõh's death row, after a judge last month threw out the conviction and death sentence of Jimmie Duncan, who spent nearly three decades on death row. A review found Duncan's conviction stood on the deeply flawed study of bite-mark analysis.
Duncan was accused of raping and drowning his girlfriend's toddler in a bathtub. Prosecutors relied on bite mark analysis and an autopsy performed by two experts later linked to wrongful convictions.
After hearing testimony, Fourth Judicial District Court Judge Alvin Sharp threw out Duncan's conviction in a ruling first reported by Verite News.
Ouachita Parish District Attorney Robert Tew's office said it is still considering next steps in that case.
