Federal appellate court throws out death sentence

BOISE – The death sentence in one of Idaho’s most notorious murders was thrown out Monday by a federal appellate court because it was imposed by a judge without the involvement of a jury.

The three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered Richard Albert Leavitt, 45, re-sentenced under the state’s new law enacted after the U.S. Supreme Court in 2002 invalidated sentencing schemes that relied solely on judges.

No convicted murderer has been sentenced under the law, approved in January 2003.

But the appellate court, for the first time, upheld the constitutionality of the criterion used to justify execution of Leavitt for the stabbing and mutilation death of Danette Jean Elg in Blackfoot in July 1984.

“This is a major ruling,” said L. LaMont Anderson, who heads the Capital Litigation Unit for Attorney General Lawrence Wasden.

The three judges held that while the criterion of the murder being “heinous, atrocious or cruel” could be considered vague on its face, the Idaho Supreme Court has sufficiently elaborated on it in past orders.

“While Leavitt may be able to envision slayings that are even more heinous, atrocious or cruel, the evidence here was sufficient to allow the Idaho courts to determine that this especially vile murder was a conscienceless or pitiless crime, which is unnecessarily torturous to the victim,” the three judges agreed.

Elg, 31, was stabbed 15 times, including once through the eye and into the brain, and was sexually mutilated in her home in Blackfoot in July 1984.

Her body was not found until several days after she died.