Mansfield Fox

Law student. Yankees fan. Massive fraggle. Just living the American dream.

Wednesday, September 08, 2004

State v. Mills Goes to Trial

It's a pretty grisly triple murder case out of Guilford. The first witness, the neighbor who called 911, testified yesterday.

I have a more than passing interest in this case. As part of my internship with the State's Attorney's office this summer, I got to sit in on a conference of some of the forensic scientists working on the case. That afternoon, I got to see crime scene and autopsy photos from the case. There's something especially sickening about the image of a young child who's been stabbed to death. Two months later, I'm still disturbed by it.

Like many murder cases, Mills is ultimately all about the death penalty. The facts of the case are mostly undisputed, and Mills would reportedly have been willing to plead guilty in exchange for a life sentence. The whole defense strategy, like that of Lee Boyd Malvo, is to effectively admit guilt while laying the groundwork to persuade the jury to be merciful in the trial's second, post-conviction round, when it will decide between life imprisonment and death.

The facts, which as I've said are basically undisputed, are as follows (for don't-sue-me purposes, please mentally insert the word "allegedly" in front of every verb):

Two days after Christmas in 2000, Jonathan Mills, who was staying with his aunt, Katherine Kleinkauf, snuck into her bedroom hoping to steal money to buy drugs. He was armed with two knives. Kleinkauf was asleep at the time; two of her children, Rachael Crum, 6, and Kyle Redway, 4, were in bed with her. As Mills was rummaging through her purse, Kleinkauf woke up and confronted him. Mills attacked her with his knives, stabbing her a total of 45 times. During the struggle, the children woke up; Mills stabbed each of them six times. Mills then took Kleinkauf's ATM card and used cash he got from it to purchase crack cocaine.

The case qualifies as a capital murder under Connecticut law because it involved both the "murder of two or more persons at the same time or in the course of the same transaction" (Conn. General Statutes, 53a-54b(7)) and the "murder of a person under sixteen years of age" (Conn. General Statutes, 53a-54b(8)).

In order to actually get a sentence of death, however, the prosecution will have to show, in a post conviction sentencing hearing, that at least one statutorily defined aggravating factor exists, and that the sum of the aggravating factors outweighs any mitigating factors that may exist.

The aggravating factors, as listed in Conn. General Statutes 53a-46a(i)
(1) The defendant committed the offense during the commission or attempted commission of, or during the immediate flight from the commission or attempted commission of, a felony and the defendant had previously been convicted of the same felony; or (2) the defendant committed the offense after having been convicted of two or more state offenses or two or more federal offenses or of one or more state offenses and one or more federal offenses for each of which the penalty of more than one year imprisonment may be imposed, which offenses were committed on different occasions and which involved the infliction of serious bodily injury upon another person; or (3) the defendant committed the offense and in such commission knowingly created a grave risk of death to another person in addition to the victim of the offense; or (4) the defendant committed the offense in an especially heinous, cruel or depraved manner; or (5) the defendant procured the commission of the offense by payment, or promise of payment, of anything of pecuniary value; or (6) the defendant committed the offense as consideration for the receipt, or in expectation of the receipt, of anything of pecuniary value; or (7) the defendant committed the offense with an assault weapon, as defined in section 53-202a; or (8) the defendant committed the offense set forth in subdivision (1) of section 53a-54b to avoid arrest for a criminal act or prevent detection of a criminal act or to hamper or prevent the victim from carrying out any act within the scope of the victim's official duties or to retaliate against the victim for the performance of the victim's official duties.
The mitigating factors, as defined by Conn. General Statutes 53a-46a(h):
(1)the defendant was under the age of eighteen years, or (2) the defendant was a person with mental retardation, as defined in section 1-1g, or (3) the defendant's mental capacity was significantly impaired or the defendant's ability to conform the defendant's conduct to the requirements of the law was significantly impaired but not so impaired in either case as to constitute a defense to prosecution, or (4) the defendant was criminally liable under sections 53a-8, 53a-9 and 53a-10 for the defense, which was committed by another, but the defendant's participation in such offense was relatively minor, although not so minor as to constitute a defense to prosecution, or (5) the defendant could not reasonably have foreseen that the defendant's conduct in the course of commission of the offense of which the defendant was convicted would cause, or would create a grave risk of causing, death to another person.
OK, take a minute to catch your breath.

As I understand it, the prosecution plans to hang its hat principally on 53a-46a(i)(4), commission of the crime in an especially heinous, cruel or depraved manner, while the defense will rely principally on 53a-46a(h)(3), impaired mental capacity.

Are these crimes "especially heinous, cruel or depraved"? Maybe. Connecticut caselaw is pretty thin on this point. One case, State v. Johnson (2000) holds a crime doesn't rise to the level of "especially heinous, cruel or depraved" unless "the defendant in fact caused the victim extreme pain and torture above and beyond that necessary to cause his death". (751 A.2d 298, at 345). That's a pretty high standard, and, disturbing as they are, it's not clear to me that these murders rise to meet it. On the other hand, the victim in Johnson, though he was shot multiple times, passed out and later died from his wounds relatively quickly (between 5 and 90 seconds). In State v. Webb the state supreme court allowed a "heinous, cruel or depraved" capital sentence to stand in which the defendant kidnapped the victim, attempted to sexually assault her, shot her twice in the back, and then delivered the fatal shot as she was attempting to crawl away. Subjective awareness that one is being killed (or at least seriously assaulted) and length and degree of suffering seem to be the crucial factors. The children seem to have been indisputably awake at the time they were killed. Will this case ultimately come down to how long the children survived their wounds?

The second issue, the defendant's partial intoxication defense, is an easier matter. Either the jury will believe the defendant's story that he was too drunk and high to understand what he was doing and conform his conduct to the requirements of the law, or they won't. I'm not an especially good mind-reader or trial outcome-predictor (as my own trial record indicates) so I won't attempt to divine how they're going to come out.

That's it for today. I'll blog again (with shorter entries I promise) as future developments arise.