Pearcy man sentenced to death
A Garland County Circuit Court jury deliberated for just under three hours Thursday before sentencing a Pearcy man to death by lethal injection for the 2011 shooting death of a Hot Springs woman, his third murder conviction since 1978.
Randy William Gay, 56, was convicted Tuesday of capital murder for the May 10, 2011, death of Connie Ann Snow, 49, after the nine- woman, threeman jury had deliberated for about 30 minutes. Following testimony Wednesday and closing arguments Thursday, the jury recommended a sentence of death, which was accepted by Judge John Homer Wright.
Wright denied a last- minute motion by Gay’s attorney, Mark Fraiser, to set it aside in favor of a sentence of life in prison without parole. After Wright formally sentenced Gay, who showed no reaction when the verdict was read, Gay said, “Take care, judge,” and Wright replied, “You too.”
Ironically, on Thursday, the Arkansas Supreme Court upheld the state’s lethal injection law as constitutional ( see related story).
“We’ve been waiting for this for 1,437 days,” Mary Beth Snow Lansdell, Snow’s daughter, said moments after the verdict was announced. “My family can finally move on now and my mother finally has justice.”
Lansdell said she was happy not only for her mother but for “the rest of his victims. He’ll never be able to hurt anyone else ever again, not even in prison.” Gay had two prior convictions for second- degree murder for the 1978 shooting death of his father- in- law, James Kelly, and the 1991 shooting death of his own father, Glen Harold Gay.
Even though Gay’s sentence sets off an automatic appeal process that could take many years, Lansdell said, “We’ve waited a long time to get to where we’re at today. This has been a long time coming.”
Prosecuting Attorney Terri Harris said there would be a direct appeal of the verdict to the Arkansas Supreme Court and how soon they might hear it would depend on “how long it takes to get the court record prepared.”
Harris, who said she believed the last time a death sentence was issued in state court in Garland County was in the 1950s, admitted “it surprised me” based on the last two capital murder cases she worked where the accused got life terms.
“This one was different, though,” she said. “I think the deciding factor was that he had killed two other people before.”
Harris thanked the jurors, who not only had to sit through seven days of “graphic testimony” but had to consider more than 70 mitigating circumstances presented by Gay’s attorneys along with the three aggravating circumstances presented by the prosecution, namely his two prior murder convictions and a felony terroristic threatening conviction in 2008.
“This is not something that anyone takes great relish in, but based on the verdict I think justice has been served,” Harris said. “The family can finally have some closure now. We’ve been working on this case for three and a half years.”
Harris commended the work of Chief Deputy Prosecutor Michelle Lawrence and Deputy Prosecutor Joe Graham, “who got the capital murder conviction,” and the earlier efforts of the U. S. attorney’s office for the Western District of Arkansas, the FBI, the U. S. Forest Service and the Garland County Sheriff’s Department, which investigated the case.
In her closing remarks to the jury, Harris went back over Wednesday’s testimony about Kelly, “a father, grandfather and musician who died a violent death at the age of 41” at the hands of Gay, noting “he can’t be here to tell us what happened.”
She said “we were spared a character assassination” of Kelly, while the defense had presented testimony about the abusive nature of Glen Gay toward his son. “The disconcerting part of the case was the attempt to minimize that murder and Randy Gay’s reasoning behind why he killed his own father.
“( Glen Gay) got beaten up in court and was not here to defend himself,” she said. “Are we supposed to turn a blind eye to a second murder?”
She told the jury that in considering the numerous mitigating circumstances presented, they needed to remember “this is not a numbers game. It’s a weighing process to make your determination. I suggest the aggravating factors outweigh the mitigating and justify a sentence of death. He took two lives and threatened to take another.”
In his closing, Fraiser warned the jury the “decision that awaits you is one of the most serious you will ever be called upon to make.” He also stressed, “This is not a collective decision. This is an individual decision each of you must make and you must maintain your position even if it upsets or offends the other jurors.”
He said there was evidence presented to support every one of the mitigating circumstances, especially those concerning Gay’s relationship with his father.
“I was lucky. I had two loving parents,” he said, noting that while he was disciplined when needed, it was “always with love. My parents always encouraged me and supported me.”
He noted the earlier testimony that Gay’s mother had tried to abort him and then abandoned Gay and his sisters at a young age, and then their father was abusive to them. Even when his father later tried to be his friend, he did so by encouraging him to drink alcohol and ignore his responsibilities.
“I can’t conceive what that must have done to a young mind,” he said, noting that his father was a big influence on him which led to them being “too much alike. He didn’t start out that way. He was made that way by how he was raised and treated.”
Fraiser noted that Gay was always a model prisoner during his previous prison terms and had qualified for parole each time on the first occasion. “This indicates that ( Gay) functions best in a controlled environment where he is not allowed to be around alcohol because alcohol is the thread that goes through this whole case.”
He noted that Gay “will never leave the department of corrections alive. He is there now and will remain there until he is pronounced dead. It’s up to you to decide if that day will be decided by God or by the state of Arkansas?”
After a recent health scare, Fraiser said he learned the “things that make life worth living” are the little things like “the smell of freshly cut grass” or “the touch of a loved one’s hand” and used the example of sunrises he had seen while duck hunting or snow skiing.
“If you sentence him to life in prison he will never have those things again nor should he. You can deprive him of every dignity.” He said death wasn’t a punishment and that true punishment is “to have everything taken away from you.”
“We as a society believe in mercy and forgiveness. I am asking you to show him that mercy, to show him that grace. There is a quote, ‘ If you take an eye for an eye you leave the whole world blind,’” he said.
“I am asking at least one of you to have the compassion and the courage to say you’re not going to be a part of premeditated murder. Because a state- sanctioned execution is the epitome of premeditated murder. I am not asking you to condone what he has done or absolve him of his crimes, but just to show him mercy.”
He briefly related the story of Jesus Christ stopping a mob from killing an alleged adulterer by telling them, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” Fraiser then pulled a rock from his jacket and placed it on the railing in front of the jury.
“I am asking that one of you please do not pick up that rock. You can achieve what needs to be done by locking him up for the rest of his life. Hasn’t there been enough bloodshed? Enough murder?”
In her rebuttal, Harris noted that “a lot of kids have been treated worse than ( Gay) growing up. His father was strict. There’s nothing exotic or unusual about being raised in that environment. There was no evidence of him showing up at school with black eyes or bruises.”
She said his abuse of alcohol was “a life choice” he made to avoid reality and facing “the day to day problems we all have to live with. That’s a choice we all make.”
She said prison was “a substitute parent” for Gay and if he had obeyed all the rules growing up like he did while in prison “he wouldn’t be sitting here today.” She noted prison would not be a punishment for Gay because “that’s his home. All you’re doing is sending him home.”
Harris said Gay “caused the violent deaths of three people for no particular reason.” In asking for the death penalty, she told the jury, “The time for leniency for this defendant has come to an end and it needs to end today.”