Murder conviction overturned decades after killings

Twenty-four years after his conviction for a double murder in rural Northern California, Joseph Shelton was in the prison law library one day and read that a federal appeals court in San Francisco had just overturned his codefendant’s murder conviction because the prosecutor had withheld evidence about a key witness — the same witness who had provided crucial testimony against Shelton.

The courts rebuffed Shelton’s first attempt to reopen his case, saying his right to appeal had expired. But he persisted, got legal representation, and after 10 years and multiple legal proceedings, another panel of the same appeals court has reversed his most serious conviction, firstdegree murder, for the same reason. Shelton remains in prison for his other convictions, and prosecutors could retry him for first-degree murder.

The crimes date back to January 1981, when Kevin Thorpe, 21, and Laura Craig, 20, were driving back to college in Oregon. Using a red light to simulate a police car, Shelton, Benjamin Wai Silva and Norman Thomas flagged down their car in the small Sierra town of Madeline (Lassen County), said the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The three then forced the couple to drive to Shelton’s cabin in a remote area, the court said.

His kidnappers chained Thorpe to a tree and, a day later, Silva and Shelton shot him to death with a machine gun. Thomas, at Silva’s orders, then dismembered Thorpe’s body, the court said. Craig, held inside the cabin, was shot to death several days later.

Information withheld

Police arrested Thomas first and he reached an agreement with prosecutors to testify against Shelton and Silva in exchange for dismissal of his murder charges. After Thomas’ lawyer raised doubts about the mental capacity of his client, who had recently suffered head injuries in a motorcycle accident, the lead prosecutor promised not to conduct any psychiatric testing of Thomas and not to say anything about his mental condition to defense lawyers or to the jury, the court said.

That was an act of “inexcusable” misconduct that tainted the verdict against Shelton, the federal appeals court said.

The trials of Shelton and Silva were both transferred out of Lassen County because of local publicity. A Mendocino County jury convicted Shelton of both murders and the kidnappings, and he was sentenced to 40 years to life in prison. Thomas pleaded guilty to lesser charges and served seven years in prison.

Silva was sentenced to death for Thorpe’s murder by a jury in San Bernardino County. But a Ninth Circuit panel overturned his death sentence in 2002, finding that his trial lawyer had failed to investigate his abusive childhood and possible mental disorders. The same panel set aside Silva’s first-degree murder conviction in 2005 because of the prosecutor’s plan to hide Thomas’ mental condition from the jury and from Silva’s lawyers.

In 2007, Silva pleaded no contest to the same murder charge and was resentenced to 25 years to life. Meanwhile, Shelton had no knowledge of what had happened in Silva’s case until he read about the 2005 ruling in the prison law library.

At his trial, Shelton had testified that he took part in the killings only because Silva had threatened to kill him. He said he had been high on drugs and alcohol but had tried to protect Craig and didn’t know Thorpe would be killed.

Thomas testified that Shelton laughed as he described his participation in Thorpe’s killing: first telling Thorpe, as he pleaded for his life, to look at a nearby mountain “because it was the last thing he would see,” then taking the machine gun from Silva to fire the final shots.

Judge’s opinion

In Friday’s 3-0 appeals court ruling, Judge Stephen Reinhardt said Thomas provided the “only direct evidence that Shelton deliberated or premeditated the killing of Thorpe,” the basis of his firstdegree murder conviction. He said there was evidence to support a verdict that Shelton had taken part in two killings that resulted from kidnappings — second-degree murder, under the law at the time — but that Thomas’ testimony was crucial for the finding of the premeditated first-degree murder of Thorpe.

Evidence that the prosecution believed Thomas to be incompetent “was powerful fodder for impeaching his testimony,” Reinhardt said.

The court upheld Shelton’s second-degree murder conviction in Craig’s death, but overturned his first-degree murder conviction and allowed prosecutors to retry him for Thorpe’s murder. But the ruling could lead to a shorter sentence for Shelton.

Had the jury known of the agreement to conceal Thomas’ mental condition, “it certainly would have undercut the prosecution’s case,” said William Osterhoudt, a lawyer for Shelton. After Shelton read about the 2005 ruling in Silva’s case, Osterhoudt said, he tried to reopen his own case, was turned down by state and federal courts, but eventually won approval for appointment of a lawyer, leading to the appeals that produced Friday’s ruling.

Prosecutors could appeal the decision or accept it and retry Shelton for Thorpe’s murder. Lassen County District Attorney Stacey Montgomery said Tuesday that she hasn’t yet decided what action to take, but she disapproved of the prosecutor’s tactics, under a previous administration, that led to the reversal.

“I would hope that this never happens again,” she said.