Lawyers for convicted yogurt shop murderer Michael Scott last week filed a motion with the Third Court of Appeals, asking that the full court review the three-judge panel’s March decision to uphold Scott’s conviction in the murder of 13-year-old Amy Ayers, one of four teen girls found murdered on Dec. 6, 1991, inside a North Austin yogurt shop. Indictments in the quadruple murder were not brought until eight years later, when the state announced it had hard evidence against four men: Robert Springsteen was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death in 2001; Scott was convicted in 2002 and sentenced to life in prison. A third defendant, Maurice Pierce, remained in jail until 2003, when District Attorney Ronnie Earle dismissed the charges against him, citing insufficient evidence to secure a conviction. The case against the fourth defendant, Forrest Welborn, was dropped in 1999 after two grand juries failed to indict him.
The state’s case against the four relied heavily on “confessions” that Springsteen and Scott made to Austin police during separate interview sessions in 1999. During those interviews, each man incriminated himself, and the other, as actors in the crime. Although Springsteen and Scott were tried separately, at each trial prosecutors offered jurors salient portions of the nontestifying defendant’s confession, in an effort to corroborate the state’s theory of the crime. However, neither defendant could be compelled to testify, and face cross-examination, at the other’s trial – that would have violated their Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights. In the end, District Judge Mike Lynch allowed the state to introduce portions of the nontestifying defendant’s confession – but only those portions during which the defendant incriminated himself. That decision satisfied prosecutors, who argue that the arrangement legally circumvents the confrontation clause.
Citing last year’s Supreme Court ruling in a case styled Crawford v. Washington, the Third Court disagreed with the state, ruling that Scott’s Sixth Amendment right to cross-examine Springsteen was violated when the trial court allowed the confession into evidence. In Crawford, the court ruled that “[w]here testimonial statements are at issue, the only indicium of reliability sufficient to satisfy constitutional demands is the one the Constitution actually prescribes: confrontation.” According to the Third Court, prosecutors were wrong in arguing that the Crawford decision did not apply to the Scott’s trial. “[T]he State’s labored effort to define a … statement in terms of what is said ignores Crawford‘s teaching,” the court opined. “We believe that Crawford means what it says.” Nonetheless, the court found that the constitutional violation did not “harm” Scott because the “error did not contribute to the conviction,” which “turned on whether the jury believed or disbelieved his statements to the police.”
The court also wrote, however, that it “would not hesitate to reverse this conviction if Springsteen’s statement were the only corroboration of Scott’s statements to police.” That caveat is encouraging to Springsteen’s attorney, Mary Kay Sicola, who notes that there is a dearth of corroborating evidence against her client, whose appeal turns on the same Sixth Amendment challenge. Unlike Scott, Springsteen’s statements were less revealing and he did not give police a signed statement, Sicola said. Although Springsteen’s appeal was filed more than a year before Scott’s, the Court of Criminal Appeals, which considers all death row appeals, has yet to rule on his case.
This article appears in May 6 • 2005.