WHY is this piece of crap still alive?!?!? If he's not a an argument for the death penalty, I don't know what is... I suppose it's because 2 of the people he murdered were inmates, so in the eyes of the law, their lives weren't worth as much as free citizens... you can bet if he'd killed 2 more people outside, he'd be dead... and WHY is this piece of sh*t in OUR prison, taking up our tax money? He belongs in Oregon, let them pay for him.
Death-row inmate: Drugs influenced my guilty plea
By KEVIN O’HANLON / The Associated Press
Nebraska death-row inmate David Dunster says he should get a new trial because he was under the influence of prescription medication when he pleaded guilty to the 1997 strangulation death of his cellmate.
In a wide-ranging appeal to the Nebraska Supreme Court, defense lawyer Jerry Soucie argues that Lancaster County District Judge Paul Merritt Jr. erred by not granting Dunster a new trial last year.
The high court issued a stay of Dunster’s execution in 2001 based on Soucie’s argument that Dunster had several health problems, including hepatitis C and bipolar disorder, also known as manic depression. He said that Dunster was taking the prescription drug Depakote to treat bipolar disorder and might not have been thinking clearly when he pleaded guilty.
Dunster has twice fired his court-appointed attorneys and told judges he would rather be executed than spend the rest of his life in prison, where he has lived since he was 17.
He pleaded guilty while representing himself.
After his plea was accepted, Dunster asked if he could be sentenced to death that day without a separate hearing or pre-sentence investigation.
“It is really a pain in the ass to get you people to kill me,” he said at the time.
He later wrote the court and said he no longer wanted to be executed.
In denying the motion for a new trial, Merritt said that although Dunster’s mental and physical condition may have fluctuated, he was “sufficiently aware” of his rights and “the possible consequences of a decision to forego the aid of counsel.”
Dunster also is challenging the constitutionality of Nebraska’s capital punishment statutes when he was sentenced.
Lawmakers changed the statutes in a special session in 2002 after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a case known as Ring vs. Arizona.
The high court said in Ring that the constitutional guarantee of a trial by a jury extends to weighing whether a killing merits a death sentence or life in prison. In other words, juries, not judges, must decide if aggravating circumstances exist to merit the death penalty.
In Nebraska, judges had made that determination since the Legislature decided in the 1970s that there was the potential of bias by juries.
Dunster argues that the Ring ruling made his death sentence void, even though the U.S. Supreme Court later said its ruling in Ring was not retroactive.
Soucie, of the Nebraska Commission of Public Advocacy, is also relying on a ruling in May by the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in a Missouri murder case.
The 8th Circuit noted that Ring did not address whether the Fifth Amendment also requires aggravating factors to be found by a grand jury and included in the indictment outlining the charges.
“We think that Ring necessarily implies such a Fifth Amendment requirement,” the court said.
The Nebraska Supreme Court will hear Dunster’s appeal on Nov. 3.
Dunster went to prison in Oregon in 1972 for killing a mother of eight. He was transferred to a Montana prison in 1978, where he later killed an inmate.
In 1993, he requested to be transferred to the Nebraska State Penitentiary in Lincoln, where he killed Larry Witt of Grand Island.
Nebraska has agreements with several states to transfer prisoners.
On the Net:
Nebraska Supreme Court: http://court.nol.org/
U.S. Supreme Court: http://www.supremecourtus.gov/
8th Circuit: http://www.ca8.uscourts.gov
Nebraska Commission on Public Advocacy: http://www.nol.org/home/ncpa/
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