INDIANAPOLIS (AP) - The question of a family’s forgiveness could be the key to a new trial for a man given three death sentences for the slayings of his wife and two teenage stepchildren in the family’s Gary home.
The Indiana Supreme Court heard arguments Thursday in 48-year-old Kevin Isom’s appeal. A Lake County jury convicted Isom last year in the 2007 shooting deaths of his 40-year-old wife, Cassandra, 16-year-old Michael Moore and 13-year-old Ci’Andria Cole.
During the penalty phase of Isom’s trial, a juror wanted to ask a member of Cassandra Isom’s family whether they had forgiven Isom, but the judge did not allow the question to be asked.
Attorney Mark Bates, who represented Isom on appeal, argued that if the answer had been yes, it could have swayed the jury from recommending the death penalty.
He said prosecutors had been prepared to offer Isom a sentence of life in prison without parole in return for his guilty plea, and they would not have considered such an offer without the family’s approval. The plea offer was never formalized.
“The plea was evidence enough of forgiveness that jurors should have been allowed to know,” Bates said during Thursday’s hour long hearing, during which justices peppered both sides with detailed questions.
Justice Robert D. Rucker pointed out to Bates that the answer to the juror’s question could have gone either way. “That presupposes what the answer will be,” he said of Bates’s argument.
Deputy Attorney General Kelly Miklos (MY-klos) said the answer would not have made any difference.
“The juror question was clearly irrelevant,” she said. “Whether an individual witness agrees with the death penalty is irrelevant.”
Chief Justice Brent Dickson and Justice Steven David noted that forgiveness and belief that Isom deserved to be executed were not necessarily linked.
“You can forgive someone and still put them to death,” Dickson said.
Members of Cassandra Isom’s family attended the hearing but declined interviews afterward.
It could be several months before the court rules on the appeal.
A Lake County jury convicted Isom at a second trial after the first was declared a mistrial over issues with the jury. Lake Criminal Court Judge Thomas Stefaniak had acknowledged that jury selection would be difficult, in part because Isom is black in a county where there is debate over whether he can get a fair trial from white residents.
Police said Cassandra Isom was shot in the head and her two children suffered gunshot wounds to their bodies. Isom was arrested after a 3 1/2-hour standoff with police.
The state and appeals defense Thursday said Isom initially said he remembered killing them but didn’t know why, but later recanted and said he didn’t remember killing them at all. But Miklos said the slayings were cold and methodical.
Bates also said in court briefs that the death penalty was not appropriate given Isom’s upbringing in Chicago housing projects, which he described as an “urban war zone.”
Isom is one of 13 men held on Indiana’s death row. A 14th inmate, Debra Denise Brown, was sentenced to die in Indiana but currently in prison in Ohio. None of them is currently scheduled for execution.
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