State justices kick death case back to lower court

LITTLE ROCK — The Arkansas Supreme Court on Thursday kicked a death penalty appeal back to a lower court, citing a procedural hang up.

The state’s highest court previously upheld the conviction and sentencing of Randy William Gay, who was sentenced to death by lethal injection in 2015 for the murder of Connie Ann Snow, but the state Supreme Court remanded the case, which has been working through post-conviction proceedings, on a technical point.

But after reviewing the latest appeal, the Arkansas Supreme Court determined a Garland County Judge didn’t respond to one key part of Gay’s petition, remanding it to the trial court level.

“From our review of the circuit court’s order denying the postconviction petition, there are no findings of fact or conclusions of law addressing this claim,” Chief Justice John Dan Kemp wrote in the court’s majority opinion.

The 2015 murder of Snow of Pine Bluff was the third time Gay had been convicted of murder. In 1978 Gay was convicted of second-degree murder for shooting his father-inlaw, Jim Kelly. In 1991, Gay was again convicted of second-degree murder for the killing of his father, Glen Harold Gay.

In his post-conviction petition, Gay listed eight allegations of “ineffective” legal representation. The Supreme Court remanded the case on one of the eight points — a Garland County judge failed to address the issue as to whether his previous legal representation didn’t properly “investigate and challenge the aggravating factors of the second-degree murders of Glen Gay and Jim Kelly.”

The order from the Arkansas Supreme Court returns the case to a Garland County Circuit Court, but only on the one procedural point. A Garland County Circuit Court judge has 60 days to complete the order.

“Our remand is confined to the single ineffective-assistance claim discussed herein,” Kemp wrote in the opinion. “No new claims may be raised on remand, and all other claims raised below but not argued on appeal are considered abandoned.”

Death penalty cases often go through a lengthy appeals process where judges review numerous appeals from defendants, often on procedural issues from the case.

Attempts to reach Gay’s attorney weren’t successful on Thursday.

In 2011, Gay shot and killed Connie Ann Snow on U.S. Forest Service property in Garland County. According to witnesses, Gay ordered Snow out of his truck during an argument, grabbed a bolt-action long gun and shot her. Gay then dragged Snow’s body to the back of his truck and later dumped her body in a creek bed in the Ouachita National Forrest, according to witnesses.

Police arrested Gay the following day at a friend’s house in Mountain Pine.