Condemned killer William Andrews, convicted in the 1974 torture-murders of three Utahns, lost another round of appeals Monday in the 10th U.S. Circuit Court.
The Denver appellate court upheld, by a 2-1 vote, a lower court's dismissal of Andrews' petition for a writ of habeas corpus. It also dismissed a civil rights claim and denied a motion for reconsideration of a new trial.Judge Monroe McKay sharply dissented, saying he would have sent the case back for a rehearing on Andrews' claim that he received ineffective legal counsel during his trial.
Andrews, 36, of Jonesboro, La., was convicted of the murders of two women and one man during a robbery of the Hi Fi Shop in Ogden. Five people were bound, forced to drink a liquid drain cleaner and shot. Two men survived.
Co-defendant Pierre Dale Selby, who admitted firing the fatal shots, was executed by lethal injection in August 1987 at Utah State Prison. Testimony showed Andrews helped Selby administer doses of liquid Drano.
Andrews had been scheduled for execution in August 1989 after the Utah Board of Pardons denied his plea for commutation.
However, the 10th Circuit issued a stay to allow the U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City to consider Andrews' appeals - the habeas-corpus petition and a supplemental writ claiming, among other things, that racial bias and false testimony tainted his trial.
U.S. District Judge David Sam rejected the appeals in August 1990, ruling Andrews could or should have raised the issues in prior proceedings.
Prosecutors contended Andrews, the nation's longest-standing death row inmate, waited too long to raise certain issues and abused the legal process by repeating arguments that have been settled in a dozen earlier appeals.
Defense attorneys could again appeal the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which has denied three previous appeals.
McKay argued that Andrews, 19 at the time of the crimes, was convicted in "one of the most highly publicized and racially inflammatory trials in the history of the state of Utah," yet was appointed an attorney barely one year out of law school.
The judge noted that the only eyewitness to the slayings indicated Andrews wasn't present at the time of the shootings and did not personally administer any of the caustic drain cleaner to the victims.
Moreover, he was overheard to protest to Selby, "I can't do it, I'm scared," McKay wrote.
Timothy Ford of Seattle, one of four attorneys handling Andrews' defense, would not say what the defense planned to do next.
"I'll read over the opinions first and figure out what is the appropriate next thing to do," he said. Andrews has two weeks to petition for a rehearing, or 90 days to file a writ of certiorari with the Supreme Court.