Killer gets deal for life sentence
A murderer originally sentenced to death will instead serve a life term in prison without parole under an agreement with the Idaho Attorney General’s Office.
Faron E. Lovelace, 48, accepted the agreement in Bonner County Court on Friday before First District Judge Steven Verby, the Attorney General’s Office announced. Lovelace, a white supremacist, was sentenced to death in 1997 for the 1995 kidnapping and murder of 24-year-old Jeremy Scott.
After the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling in 2002 that only juries, not judges, could deliver death sentences, Lovelace asked the state to overturn his conviction and death sentence. Previously, he had said he preferred death to a life behind bars.
The retrial was scheduled to begin this fall. Under the deal struck Friday, the trial will not be necessary and Lovelace agreed not to file any more appeals.
“It wasn’t the easiest decision,” said Teresa Hampton, Lovelace’s attorney in Boise. “Once he had time to reflect on the offer, talk with his family and talk with us, he decided it was the best resolution.”
Bob Cooper, spokesman for the Attorney General’s Office, said the office conducted an “exhaustive review” of the Lovelace case, combing through thousands of pages of evidence and interviews.
“Justice dictates a life sentence rather than the death penalty,” Cooper said the office determined.
Bonner County Clerk Marie Scott said she notified the county’s board of commissioners of the agreement on Friday. If the matter had gone to trial, it could have cost the county at least $250,000.
“Collectively we are relieved that we won’t be incurring that type of financial cost,” Scott said. “When you’re talking about sequestering a jury, the cost is just phenomenal.”
For the trial, which was expected to last at least two weeks, Scott said the county may have had to drain its coffers and even borrow money to pay for court costs.
But Cooper said the savings to the county isn’t a reason for the agreement.
The agreement is the final chapter in a drama that began in 1995 when Lovelace shot Jeremy Scott in the back of his head and buried him in a shallow grave in rural Bonner County. Lovelace was on parole following an armed-robbery conviction when he murdered Scott.
He led police to the grave and confessed after he was arrested for violating his parole.
Lovelace has given different reasons for killing Scott – because he believed Scott was a government informant, or that he killed Scott on behalf of his friend and fellow white supremacist Chevie Kehoe, who wanted Scott’s girlfriend for himself.
Originally, Lovelace said he wanted death, a sentence he received in 1997. But in March he told The Spokesman-Review that he wanted out of a small cell on death row – through death or by becoming part of the general prison population.
Scott’s half-sister, Kathryn Main, said in March that she wanted to see Lovelace again sentenced to death and planned to attend the September trial. “He’s done irrevocable harm to our family,” Main said. She couldn’t be reached for comment following Friday’s agreement.