Katrina part of defense in trial
Posted on Monday, April 21, 2008
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/News/223470/
If Gregory Christopher Decay is convicted of capital murder this week, his attorneys plan to argue that the former New Orleans resident pulled the trigger on a Fayetteville couple while traumatized from Hurricane Katrina.
The capital murder trial for Decay, 24, begins today in Washington County. He is accused in the April 2007 slayings of Kevin Barkley Jones and Kendall Rachell Rice, both 24.
Jones and Rice were shot in the head in a drug dispute, court records show. Their bodies were found in their Fayetteville apartment.
Deputy public defender Julie Tolleson said that if Decay is convicted, she will argue that trauma caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 will be part of mitigating evidence in the sentencing phase.
“We’ll want to tell as much of his life story as we can,” Tolleson said. “And Katrina is part of what got him here today.”
Decay’s isn’t the first case where the deadly hurricane and its aftermath have been part of court strategy. The Katrina angle has been an element in other criminal cases in Arkansas and Texas — states that saw an influx of refugees when the storm slammed the Gulf Coast.
Little Rock lawyer John Wesley Hall Jr. planned to use the defense in the case of a Katrina refugee charged in Arkansas with a felony drug crime. The case, however, never went to trial because the man disappeared, and he’s believed to have committed suicide in New Orleans, Hall said.
“We planned to put on evidence showing the true horrors of what Katrina was, with bodies floating by in high water and people trapped in their homes without anything for a week,” said Hall, who is president-elect of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.
“These people were uprooted and separated from family and friends and everything they knew, and we were going to show that this kind of psychological trauma can last for years,” he said.
Elton Richey, president of the Louisiana Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said he’s never heard of a defense of trauma by Katrina in Louisiana.
“In my mind, you’d have to show more than just that someone was evacuated from their house,” Richey said. “The real task for the attorneys is going to be linking the trauma to Katrinarelated events. If they have a fullfledged mental health diagnosis, that would have a very strong impact.”
Tolleson wouldn’t comment on what kind of evidence will support the Katrina angle in Decay’s case, but court records show that his mother, Tammy Decay of Kenner, La., will testify about trauma her son suffered in the disaster.
Decay, who goes by “Tutu,” came to Fayetteville after fleeing New Orleans, police said.
Atlanta defense lawyer Chris Adams, who is co-chairman of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers Death Penalty Committee, said people severely traumatized by events such as disasters or wars often lose their ability to handle subsequent stress.
“What we’ve learned is that if someone has been truly traumatized, rather than building a tolerance to stressful situations, the trauma actually rips down their ability to respond appropriately to ‘stressors’ in life,” said Adams, who’s represented murder defendants who had post traumatic stress disorder.
“That old saying, ‘what doesn’t kill you will make you stronger’ isn’t always true, especially when it comes to severe psychological trauma,” he said.
There’s no indication in court records that Decay claims he has the disorder.
In Houston, where many Katrina refugees ended up staying, some lawyers have found that juries lose compassion when a refugee is on trial for a crime.
“The sense down at the Houston courthouse is that juries aren’t very sympathetic to Katrina evacuees who aren’t abiding by the law,” Houston defense lawyer Mark Bennett said. “There have been cases where lawyers weren’t inclined to go to trial with defendants who are former New Orleanians because of that exact sentiment.”
Scott Durfee, spokesman for the Harris County District Attorney’s Office in Houston, said the office prosecuted Katrina refugees as a normal course of its case load.
“One way to package a defense argument is the trauma of Katrina,” Durfee said. “If you have a sympathetic case, that might work. But if you have a murder case that’s not very sympathetic, evoking the Katrina card might not do any good.”
In the Fayetteville case, Decay told police he shot and killed Jones and Rice on April 3, 2007, because he thought they stole marijuana and other things from his apartment, the affidavit states.
Fayetteville police couldn’t confirm Decay’s claim that Jones and Rice broke into Decay’s apartment and stole marijuana, a set of scales and a 9 mm handgun.
Decay told police he shot Jones and Rice when he went to their apartment to confront them about a burglary, the affidavit states. He said he distracted the couple, pulled out a gun and told Jones to “get down.” Jones walked toward Decay, and Decay fired once, shooting Jones in the face. Decay then shot Rice one time and left, he told police.
Jones’ mother found the couple’s bodies the next morning. They’d just moved into the Club at the Creek Apartments at 701 W. Sycamore St.
A co-defendant, Jesse Lee Westeen, 21, of Fayetteville, is charged with being an accomplice to capital murder. He’s accused of driving Decay to the apartment, knowing Decay was going to kill Jones and Rice.
Prosecutors are not seeking the death penalty against Westeen. He’s being tried separately from Decay.