By John Futty
The Columbus Dispatch
COLUMBUS, Ohio — When she filled out a questionnaire as a potential juror in Keywan Tarran Conner’s murder trial, the Northwest Side woman marked a box to show that she “slightly favored” the death penalty.
But by the time she sat in a Franklin County courtroom last week and was questioned by Assistant Prosecutor Elizabeth Geraghty, the 50-year-old homemaker’s attitude had changed.
“I’m not sure I could actually make that decision to put someone to death,” she said. “I haven’t stopped thinking about it. What if we’re putting an innocent man to death? I don’t know if I could sleep.”
Prosecuting and defense attorneys agreed that the woman should be excused from serving in the case.
She wasn’t alone.
Of the 81 potential jurors interviewed, 39 were disqualified, most because their views on the death penalty made it impossible or unlikely that they could keep an open mind in deciding whether Conner — if convicted of aggravated murder with death-penalty specifications — should be sentenced to life in prison or death.
The 42 who qualified will return to the courtroom of Judge David E. Cain on Tuesday for another round of questioning to select a panel of 12 jurors and four alternates for Franklin County’s first death-penalty jury trial in nearly three years.
Two weeks ago, a panel of three Franklin County judges sentenced Caron E. Montgomery to death after he waived his right to a jury and pleaded guilty to aggravated murder in the stabbing deaths of his former girlfriend, their 2-year-old son and her 10-year-old daughter. It was the first death sentence imposed in Franklin County since 2003.
A jury hasn’t heard a death-penalty case in the county since July 2009.
Conner, 27, is charged with fatally shooting a pregnant woman, Tenishia Ferguson-Latham, and seriously wounding her husband, Larry Latham, during a burglary and robbery at their Clinton Township home on Feb. 28, 2011. Doctors were able to deliver the couple’s baby girl at 27 weeks but couldn’t save Ferguson-Latham.
Her 9-year-old son witnessed the shooting and tried to perform CPR on his mother before paramedics arrived.
A death-penalty indictment prompts a jury-selection process unlike those for other trials. The jury commission sent notices to more than 300 people asking them to report to the Common Pleas Courthouse on May 24. The 111 who showed up were given a 20-page questionnaire asking them about their backgrounds and their opinions about capital punishment.
They returned last week, in groups of six, to hear attorneys in the case explain how the death penalty is imposed in Ohio and to answer questions about whether they could follow that process.
Like the woman from the Northwest Side, some changed their thinking about the death penalty as they considered the prospect of signing their names to a death verdict.
“When you think about it in the abstract, it’s easy to say, ‘I believe in the death penalty,’ ” Cain said after one of the sessions. “But when you’re sitting there eyeball to eyeball with the defendant, it can be difficult. These cases involve real people, and it can make a difference when you’re talking about real people.”
Geraghty and Assistant Prosecutor James Lowe used a chart to explain that, if jurors convict Conner of aggravated murder with death specifications, they must participate in a sentencing phase. In that phase, jurors decide whether mitigating factors, such as the defendant’s background and mental health, outweigh the aggravating circumstances of the crime.
The balancing act determines whether the jury recommends death, life without parole or life with a chance of parole after 25 or 30 years.
Potential jurors who either oppose the death penalty or think death is the only appropriate penalty for murder are removed from the pool.
Some said their religious views would prohibit them from voting for a death sentence. Others, like a 70-year-old Far West Side man, said they believe in “an eye-for-an-eye,” with no exceptions.
Larry Thomas, one of Conner’s attorneys, told the potential jurors that discussing the sentencing phase before they’ve heard any evidence — a time when his client is presumed innocent — is operating “backwards.”
But he called it a necessary step.
“You don’t want to find out afterward that some of the jurors can’t follow the law,” he said. “You don’t want anyone who would automatically vote for death or automatically vote for life.”
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