Judge Denies Appeal By Killer Of Paper Carrier

Sixth District Judge Lynn Winmill on Wednesday rejected condemned child murderer James Edward Wood’s bid to overturn his guilty plea and death sentence, ruling that a public defender’s errors were not significant enough to affect the case.

Winmill found that some of Monte Whittier’s actions were “inappropriate, ill-advised and objectively, unreasonable.”

However, the judge said, “While it is clear that inappropriate contacts occurred during this case, their timing was such as to preclude any possible effect on this case.”

Whittier allowed Wood to meet with a Mormon Church stake president and a bishop, who also was Whittier’s law partner, shortly before Wood’s sentencing for the June 1993 abduction, murder and mutilation of 11-year-old Pocatello newspaper carrier Jeralee Underwood.

Rolf Kehne and John Adams, the Boise attorneys handling Wood’s appeal, argued that Whittier provided Wood an inadequate defense and was biased because of his Mormon religious beliefs and relationships between his law partners and the Underwood family.

Kehne and Adams contended Whittier allowed local officials of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to meet with Wood to persuade him he could only receive forgiveness for Jeralee’s murder through “blood atonement,” by giving up his own life.

But Winmill, who belongs to the same Mormon stake or group of congregations as the Underwoods, said he was unpersuaded that religious beliefs affected the case. The judge earlier denied requests from Wood’s lawyers to disqualify himself from the case because he knew the victim’s family through the church.