Court Overturns Killer’s Death Sentence Prosecutor, Dissenting Justices Say Decision Based Upon Technicality

The state Supreme Court on Thursday overturned the death sentence of liquor-store killer Sammie Luvene, drawing a blast from Pierce County Prosecutor John Ladenburg.

The court ordered that Luvene be removed from death row and resentenced to life in prison without parole because prosecutors were late in filing notice of their intent to seek execution.

“The state had an order prepared within the statutory period and the opportunity to file it but failed to do so through simple inadvertence, and therefore cannot show good cause for its failure,” Justice Pro Tem Bob Utter wrote for the majority in the 6-3 decision.

The justices upheld Luvene’s conviction for aggravated first-degree murder.

Ladenburg said the decision to overturn the death penalty was based on a technicality.

“In fact,” Ladenburg said, “we had agreed to give the defense attorneys more time to prepare arguments against seeking the death penalty. This is a case of no good deed not being punished.”

In a dissenting opinion, Chief Justice Barbara Durham said the majority decision was based on a technicality and an erroneous reading of the law.

The state’s death penalty law, Durham wrote, “explicitly provides for an extension of the notice to seek the death penalty if the failure to file is ‘external to the prosecutor.”’

She pointed out that the judge assigned to the case was out of town and was unavailable to sign the extension order.

“Surely the absence of a judge on the last two days of the filing period amounts to a reason external to the prosecutor,” Durham wrote.

She was joined in the dissent by Justices Jim Dolliver and Gerry Alexander.

Joining Utter in the majority opinion were Justices Charles Johnson, Barbara Madsen, Charles Smith, Richard Guy and Phil Talmadge.

Luvene, now 28, was convicted of the July 2, 1992, shooting death of Carroll Bond, a Milton liquor store clerk, during a robbery attempt.

Store owner Margaret Detrick, who was shot twice after she ducked behind a counter, recovered from her wounds and testified at the trial.

After the trial, Deputy Prosecutor Michael Johnson described the shootings as “one of the more cold, callous and calculated offenses I’ve ever seen against innocent parties.”

In upholding Luvene’s conviction, the high court turned aside several arguments asserting misconduct by prosecutors, including introduction of what Luvene said was false rebuttal evidence.