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Tyrone
Lamont BAKER
obberies -
Kidnapping
LAWRENCE -- The Douglas County
courtroom was silent Friday for the reading of verdicts finding Tyrone
L. Baker guilty of all charges relating to the December 1989 kidnappings
and murders of Topekans Lester and Nancy Haley.
Some members of the Haley family
cried silently. Baker, 21, sat motionless, eyes fixed straight ahead, as
the court clerk read the five felony verdicts.
The jury deliberated slightly more
than two hours before finding Baker guilty of first- degree murder in
the Haleys' deaths, guilty of the aggravated kidnappings of the Haleys
and guilty of committing aggravated assault on the Haleys' neighbor,
Verne B. Horne, 70.
In finding Baker guilty of the
aggravated kidnapping charges, the jury decided the kidnappings were
committed both with the intent to inflict bodily injury or to terrorize
the Haleys and with the intent to facilitate flight or the commission of
a crime.
The jury considered testimony from
26 witnesses and viewed about 75 exhibits. They were guided by a set of
23 jury instructions and had 33 separate verdict forms to consider.
Evidence included testimony from
the defendant, who denied having any knowledge of how the Haleys died
and explained that he was sometimes taken over by an evil force whose
purpose was to destroy all that is good.
The jury also heard from two
Topeka psychiatrists who agreed Baker was a paranoid schizophrenic but
disagreed on whether he suffered psychotic episodes in which he lost
contact with reality.
Defense psychiatrist Dr. Gilbert
Parks found Baker insane and not responsible for his acts. The state's
psychiatrist, Dr. Herbert Modlin, said Baker was sane and fully capable
of understanding the nature of his acts and that they were prohibited by
law.
"What these two trials to me boil
down to is a battle of experts," said Suzanne James of Topeka, Nancy
Haley's daughter. "Whose expert was more compelling than the other. It
seemed very clear to me, but you don't know how it's affecting other
people.
"I'm just really thankful to those
jurors. They said, "Maybe we aren't experts in psychiatry, but one
sounded more reasonable than the other.'
"I just feel an enormous sense of
relief that it's over and I only have to look at Tyrone Baker one more
time."
Baker will appear back in court on
Oct. 18 for a hearing on post-trial motions and sentencing.
James sat through the trial with a
small contingent of her family members and friends and family and
friends of Ida Mae Dougherty. Dougherty was the Topeka woman Horne and
the Haleys were checking on when they first encountered Baker on Dec. 4,
1989.
The same group sat through Baker's
Shawnee County trial in June 1990 when he was convicted of killing
Dougherty, 72, and the initial kidnappings of Horne and the Haleys.
Baker is serving life plus 51
years to life in prison for the Shawnee County convictions.
Presiding juror Joseph Alonzo said
the psychiatric testimony helped the jury decide.
"I don't know if I would say they
(the jury) believed the insanity defense," Alonzo said. "We were sort of
on the borderline there, on the edge. Everybody had an issue, saying,
"Where am I really on this?' You had to sit and discuss several issues
and become comfortable."
Alonzo said jurors took several
votes before reaching their decision. None of the jurors believed Baker
was innocent, he said.
In closing arguments, Douglas
County District Attorney Jerry Wells said Baker's actions deprived the
Haleys of a death with grace, dignity and peace.
"They were slaughtered like
animals in a field," he said. "Executed. Why, why, why were these people
slaughtered like that? Executed in that field. For one very simple
reason. That man wanted to cover his tracks and conceal his crime."
Topeka attorney Pedro Irigonegaray,
the special prosecutor hired by the victims' families, told the jury
that while Baker is mentally ill, there is no evidence that he is insane
and unaccountable for his actions.
"He is a criminal," Irigonegaray
said. "He does have responsibility. He knew what he was doing. He was
afraid of the law. The law you now represent. He was afraid of the law
because he knew what he was doing was wrong."
Baker's attorney, Ron Wurtz, a
Shawnee County public defender, urged the jury to consider evidence of
eight or 10 irrational acts Baker committed and find him not guilty by
reason of insanity.
He reminded the jury that it was
the state's job to prove Baker sane beyond a reasonable doubt, not the
job of the defense to prove him insane.
"Is that proof beyond a reasonable
doubt?" Wurtz asked. "Are those grains of sugar that you've scraped
together, is that reasonable doubt? If it is, you must pick the verdict
that says not guilty by reason of insanity. That's the law."
United States Court of Appeals
For the Tenth Circuit
Before EBEL, BALDOCK,
and LUCERO, Circuit Judges.
After examining the briefs and appellate record, this
panel has determined unanimously that oral argument would not materially
assist the determination of this appeal. See Fed. R. App. P.
34(a)(2); 10th Cir. R. 34.1(G). The case is therefore ordered submitted
without oral argument.
Petitioner Tyrone Baker, a state inmate, seeks a
certificate of appealability ("COA") that would allow him to appeal from
the district court's order denying relief on his habeas petition brought
pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2254. He also appeals from the court's order
lifting the stay in his habeas action. We have jurisdiction under 28
U.S.C. §§ 1291 and 2253(a). We conclude that the district court properly
lifted the stay. Because Mr. Baker has failed to make a "substantial
showing of the denial of a constitutional right" as required by 28 U.S.C.
§ 2253(c)(2), we deny his application for COA and dismiss the appeal.
I. Facts and proceedings
In 1991 Mr. Baker was convicted of two counts of
first-degree murder and two counts of aggravated kidnapping in Douglas
County, Kansas, after having been previously convicted of a separate
count of first-degree murder, aggravated burglary, conspiracy to commit
aggravated burglary, and three counts of kidnapping in Shawnee County,
Kansas.(1)
His convictions all arise from a series of events occurring in 1989 and
beginning in Shawnee County, where Mr. Baker murdered an elderly woman
and burglarized her home. When three of the victim's neighbors came to
check on her, Mr. Baker kidnapped them and drove them to an isolated
location in Douglas County. One of the kidnapped victims convinced Mr.
Baker to return to Shawnee County to make sure his first victim was dead.
After Mr. Baker left, she ran for help, and the other two victims, who
were elderly and infirm, tried to hide. When the victim who ran for help
returned with police officers, the other two victims were missing from
the location where Mr. Baker had left them. Their bodies were later
found three miles away, but still in Douglas County, where Mr. Baker had
moved and murdered them. The State asserted that this second moving of
the victims constituted separate kidnappings. Mr. Baker's above-described
convictions were affirmed on direct appeal.
Mr. Baker filed his federal habeas petition on April
27, 1995, raising a single issue: whether his trial and convictions for
kidnapping in Douglas County violated the Double Jeopardy Clause of the
United States Constitution. On October 17, 1997, Mr. Baker filed a
motion for a stay of his federal habeas proceeding, arguing that he was
seeking state habeas relief for the first time on additional grounds(2),
and that if no relief was granted, he may wish to amend his federal
petition to include the issues. The district court granted the stay,
noting that the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act ("AEDPA")
could potentially bar the refiling of the federal habeas action if the
court dismissed it for failure to exhaust the potential claims. See
R. Doc. 14.
The district court revisited its decision and lifted
the stay on September 20, 2001, concluding that Mr. Baker's potential
additional federal habeas claims would be barred under AEDPA because he
had failed to timely raise them after AEDPA's passage, and they asserted
new theories of relief. See R. Doc. 21, at 1-2 (citing
Woodward v. Williams, 263 F.3d 1135 (10th Cir. 2001), cert.
denied, 122 S. Ct. 1442 (2002); Duncan v. Walker, 533 U.S.
167 (2001); and United States v. Espinoza-Saenz, 235 F.3d 501,
505 (10th Cir. 2000)). The court concluded that Mr. Baker's habeas
petition was therefore ripe for decision, as a stay could not salvage
the untimely claims. We hold that the district court properly lifted the
stay.
As to the merits of his petition for COA, Mr. Baker
may make a "substantial showing of the denial of a constitutional right"
by demonstrating that the Double Jeopardy issue raised in his habeas
petition and rejected by the district court is debatable among jurists,
or that a court could resolve the issues differently, or that the
question presented deserves further proceedings. See Slack v.
McDaniel, 529 U.S. 473, 483-84 (2000). We have carefully reviewed
the record, the petition, and the applicable law. For substantially the
same reasons stated by the district court in its order filed March 29,
2002, we conclude that the Double Jeopardy issue is not debatable among
jurists, that we would not resolve the issues differently, and that the
question presented does not deserve further proceedings. Mr. Baker's "Motion
to Proffer" transcripts from separate state-court actions is DENIED. We
DENY a COA and DISMISS the appeal.
1.
Mr. Baker's conviction for aggravated assault was overturned by the
Kansas Supreme Court in 1994. See State v. Baker, 877 P.2d
946, 951 (Kan. 1994). In his petition for COA, Mr. Baker briefly
complains that Kansas still has not removed that conviction from his
records, and that the state court has refused to rule on this issue
in his post-conviction motions. That issue was not raised in his
habeas petition that we review here, however, and will not be
addressed.
2.
The state-post conviction petition was filed May 21, 1997. The
grounds include incompetence to stand trial; "forced insanity plea";
conflict of interest; "private vindictive prosecution";
prosecutorial misconduct; and ineffective assistance of counsel. R.
Doc. 19, Ex. A.
Tyrone Baker looks into a camera during his Shawnee
County murder trial.
In the foreground is legal aide Cindy McNorton.
Verne "B." Horne demonstrates how Baker held Horne
and two of her neighbors at gunpoint during Baker's June 1990 Shawnee
County trial.
Lisa Pfannenstiel was sentenced to six to 15 years in
prison as part of a plea agreement following the 1989 murders.