[R]UTLAND – The legal team for Donald Fell, who is facing a possible death penalty sentence, has scored a victory in federal court with a ruling barring statements from an alleged accomplice portraying Fell as the leader, not a follower, in a gruesome murder spree.
The long-awaited appeals court decision now clears the path for the case to proceed to jury selection followed by the capital trial for 38-year-old Fell in slaying of 53-year-old Teresca King of North Clarendon in November 2000.
At a hearing in the case Monday in federal court in Rutland, Judge Geoffrey Crawford told attorneys in the case that he hoped summons would be sent to prospective jurors by August.
Crawford added that he expected to have the individual questioning of jurors in court underway by October, with the trial taking place after that jury panel is seated.
The ruling Friday by the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals affirms an earlier decision from Crawford in the case, though for a different reason.
Robert Lee, who was arrested along with Fell days after King’s killing also faced federal charges that carried the death penalty. He died in prison in 2001.
Prosecutors were not seeking to admit Lee’s statements into Fell’s trial, but rather into any penalty phase of the proceeding to show an “aggravating factor” as a reason why Fell should be put to death.
However, the appeals court wrote in its recent ruling that the “record is replete with indications that the Lee statements are unreliable.”
According to police, the two men were fleeing the slayings of Debra Fell, Fell’s mother, and her friend, Charles Conway, when they carjacked King as she arrived to work early in the morning at a supermarket bakery in Rutland and then beat her to death in New York state.
“The government does not dispute that Lee lied in his initial statements to the FBI by telling investigators that Fell committed each of the three murders,” the appeals court wrote in its ruling.
It was only later, according to the decision, that Lee admitted to his “direct” role in the killings of Debra Fell and King, but “continued to place blame on Fell in important ways.”
Fell’s attorneys, the ruling added, “introduced unrebutted evidence that Lee had a well-documented history of not just lying, but of shifting blame to others whenever he found himself in trouble. These factors, taken together, significantly undermine the claim of reliability of Lee’s statements and their concomitant admissibility at sentence-selection.”
Among the post-arrest statements prosecutors were seeking to admit into the penalty phase of the case were FBI interviews conducted with Lee; two handwritten statements drafted by Lee; and “certain undated and unsigned handwritten letters purportedly written by Lee” from prison following his arrest for his role in the slayings of Conway, Debra Fell, and King.
“Each statement broadly inculpates Lee principally in the killings of Debbie (Fell) and King, while also discussing in detail Fell’s role in the murder of all three victims,” the appeals court wrote in its ruling.
Prosecutors have contended the information from Lee is backed up by other evidence in the case, while Fell’s attorneys have argued that Lee was an unreliable witness, due in part to several factors, including his mental health.
In May 2017, Crawford ruled against allowing the prosecutors to use the statements at a possible sentencing phase of the case, arguing that permitting them would be a violation of Fell’s due process rights to confront a witness against him.
Prosecutors appealed.
Before taking up the matter on appeal, the U.S. 2nd Circuit of Appeals ordered Crawford to hold a hearing on the “reliability” of Lee’s statements, which took place over four days.
Crawford, in a ruling earlier this year in January, ultimately found several of Lee’s statements reliable.
In his ruling finding the statements reliable, Crawford wrote that testimony didn’t show that Lee was delusional when he gave his statements to authorities. Instead, the judge wrote, “his primary diagnoses were of depression.”
The appeals court in its ruling Friday disagreed with Crawford on the reliability issue, and therefore didn’t have to take up the matter raised by Crawford as his reason for barring them from the penalty phase.
The appeals court wrote that Fell’s and Lee’s confessions differed substantially on the reason why Conway and Debra Fell were killed, the nature of the killing, and who made the decision to kill the victims.
Fell told police that he just “snapped,” while Lee said Fell wanted Conway dead because Conway had threatened to report the two men to police, the decision stated.
Also, according to the ruling, Lee stated in his confession that Fell told him to kill Debra Fell, and Fell told authorities that Lee killed her on his initiative.
In addition, Lee’s handwritten letter stated that Fell “slammed Debbie Fell’s head with a shotgun, a fact for which there is neither physical or testimonial corroboration,” the ruling stated.
“Consequently, although Lee’s statements as a general matter describe a timeline of events and describe certain features of the killings, such as the position of the bodies, similar to that demonstrated by the evidence, including Fell’s confession, there are significant elements of those statements that are uncorroborated and that go directly to the non-statutory aggravating factors that the government will seek to prove,” the appeals court wrote.
“The government therefore cannot show that Lee’s statements are sufficiently corroborated to overcome our concerns regarding the reliability of the portions of those statements that matter.”
News of the appeals court’s ruling was brought up at the start of a hearing Monday morning that is set to stretch into Tuesday regarding the constitutionality of the death penalty and questions concerning the jury selection process.
Crawford began the hearing by telling the attorneys he was glad to see the issue of Lee’s statements decided.
“It was helpful to get it aired,” he told the lawyers.
Otherwise, he said, it could have led to another retrial of the case.
Fell had already been found guilty and sentenced to death. But that conviction and sentence were later overturned after revelations of juror misconduct.
Fell is currently being held without bail at a detention center in Brooklyn, New York. He did not attend Monday’s hearing.
The federal trial only deals with King’s death, which involved the crossing of state lines. Fell has never been charged in connection with the death of his mother or Conway.
State prosecutors have said they were awaiting the results of the federal prosecution prior to moving forward on any state charges against Fell.
