Carr brothers seek to dodge death penalty again for 2000 murder, rape, robbery spree
Jonathan and Reginald Carr, sentenced to die for a brutal murder, rape and robbery spree in Wichita in the winter of 2000, will be back in court May 24 as the Kansas Supreme Court considers issues left unresolved in 2014 when it overturned their death sentences — a decision that was itself later overturned in the U.S. Supreme Court.
The purpose of Monday’s oral arguments will be to consider 20 issues that were raised in the original appeal, but which the Kansas court decided in 2014 didn’t need to be addressed, because it had already decided on other grounds that the Carrs should not die for their crimes.
In 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court revived the process when it overturned the state court’s action that had vacated the Carr brothers’ death sentences.
“As a result of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision, the cases are here to address penalty-phase issues from the brothers’ capital murder trial that the court did not previously need to rule on,” said a statement issued Monday docketing the case for more arguments at the Kansas Supreme Court.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Kansas justices had improperly applied federal law in the case, particularly when they ruled that combining the brothers’ penalty phases at trial had violated their rights under the federal Constitution.
That’s still listed as an issue on appeal, although the state court can’t issue any rulings that would conflict with the federal court’s decisions based on federal law.
Other issues to be resolved focus on whether the jury was correctly instructed by the trial judge, whether there was prosecutorial misconduct that tainted the proceedings, and whether a state law allowing the death penalty to be imposed on those who aid and abet a murder is constitutional.
The case was one of the most notorious killing sprees in Kansas history.
On the night of Dec. 14, 2000, the brothers burst into a home and forced five young adults to perform a variety of degrading sexual acts with the brothers and each other.
The Carrs also kidnapped the five friends, drove them to automatic teller machines to drain their bank accounts, and finally, shot each victim in the head execution-style in a frozen field and ran over the sprawled bodies with a pickup.
Jason Befort, 26; Brad Heyka, 27; Aaron Sander, 29, and Heather Muller, 25, died at the scene.
But the fifth victim, identified in court by the initials H.G. survived because the bullet was deflected by a hair clip she was wearing. Naked, shoeless and grievously wounded, she managed to stagger to a home more than a mile away and alert authorities to what had happened.
The Carr brothers were later linked to two crimes earlier in the month: the carjacking and robbery of a 23-year-old man and the shooting death of Wichita symphony cellist Linda “Ann” Walenta.
The new proceedings in the brothers’ appeals will be heard by the state Supreme Court via teleconferencing. The arguments, beginning at 9 a.m. Monday, will be livestreamed on the court’s YouTube channel.
This story was originally published May 17, 2021 at 6:47 PM.
