Carr brothers hearing in Wichita capital murders a matter of semantics, DA says

Attorneys for the Carr brothers argued Wednesday before the Kansas Supreme Court that the convicted murderers should get another sentencing hearing because of how a Sedgwick County judge announced their death sentence more than a decade ago.

“As offensive as it may be to many, today is about procedure,” Jason Belveal, attorney for Reginald Carr, said. “I’m not here to argue or even discuss culpability, but rather the indispensable issue of whether due process is followed. Today we determine … whether the courts dotted the I’s in justice and crossed the T’s in death penalty. They have not … It is in the grizzliest of cases that due process and legal procedure matter the most.”

Jonathan Carr’s attorney, Mark Henricksen, made the same argument.

At issue is whether the original death sentences imposed on Jonathan and Reginald Carr remain valid after the Kansas Supreme Court overturned certain capital murder counts from their convictions in 2014. Their attorneys argued that the capital murder counts read by the judge were numbered differently during the conviction and sentencing phases of the trial in such a way that their death sentences were imposed on counts that have been vacated, requiring a new penalty-phase jury to reconsider the death penalty. The state’s lawyer countered that, despite changes in count references, it remains clear which capital murder conviction stands and that the trial judge’s sentence correctly reflects the court’s 2014 ruling, so the death sentences are valid and require no further proceedings.

Sedgwick County District Attorney Marc Bennett, in a news conference clarifying what the hearing was about, said this hearing was about “semantics.”

“It was clear what Judge (Paul) Clark meant,” he said. “But their point was, ‘we don’t make assumptions at all in (a death penalty case).”’

Supreme Court justices also had a hard time siding with the argument being made by attorneys for the Carr brothers, who were found guilty by a jury then sentenced to death in 2002 for the 2000 brutal killing of four Wichita residents: Aaron Sander, Brad Heyka, Heather Muller and Jason Befort.

The appeal in the decades-old case is the latest in what is expected to continue being a long court process: Bennett said this part of the case is one of three parts, which will all be argued in separate hearings and only proceed once another one has been ruled on or exhausted on appeals.

He also said he didn’t know how long it would take the Kansas Supreme Court to rule on the hearing Wednesday, but, based on previous high-profile cases, he expected it to take months.

The death sentencing in the case was previously overturned by the Kansas Supreme Court before it was later reinstated by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Henricksen said it “appears there’s reluctance to continue this litigation.”

“We believe that Jonathan Carr has never been sentenced. Period,” Henricksen said. “And that he is entitled to a sentencing, as provided in Kansas law.”

Justice Caleb Stegall questioned the merit of the argument.

“If there’s merit to your argument, that he was never sentenced,” Stegall. “How is that coming up now, after we already affirmed the sentence.”