The Kansas Supreme Court has shut down Jonathan and Reginald Carr's latest attempt to overturn their death sentences, issuing one-line denials on Aug. 20 and moving one of Wichita's most notorious murder cases into a new legal phase.
The Sedgwick County District Attorney's Office announced the denials Aug. 21, saying the court refused to reconsider its June ruling rejecting the brothers' arguments for new sentencing hearings, as reported by the Wichita Eagle. The court's response to each motion: "Considered by the Court and Denied."
Jonathan Carr filed his motion to reconsider on Aug. 5; Reginald Carr filed his the next day. Boyd Isherwood, chief of the DA's Appellate Division, responded in writing to both on Aug. 18. The court issued its denials two days later, at 2:45 p.m. and 2:48 p.m.
The motions are dead.
What comes next
The DA's office said the cases will now return to Sedgwick County District Court to begin proceedings under K.S.A. 60-1507, a civil challenge to the quality of representation each brother received from trial lawyers. That marks the start of a second round of appeals.
Sedgwick County District Attorney Marc Bennett said in a July 15 KWCH interview that capital defendants can go through three levels of appeals and that the Carr brothers had exhausted only the first.
"This is not supposed to be easy. It is a long, hard slog. And we are in it for the long term. And I will continue to fight this on behalf of those families until we are done, whatever that means," Bennett said at the time, after Gov. Laura Kelly denied the brothers' clemency request.
The case
The Carr brothers were sentenced to death in 2002 for a December 2000 crime spree that left five people dead. They were convicted of robbing, sexually assaulting and murdering Aaron Sander, 29; Brad Heyka, 27; Jason Befort, 26; and Heather Muller, 25, during a home invasion that ended with an execution-style shooting in a snow-covered soccer field. They also fatally shot 55-year-old Wichita Symphony cellist Linda "Ann" Walenta and carjacked and robbed a 23-year-old man during the same spree.
In their most recent appeal, the brothers argued their death sentences were not legal because of the way capital murder counts were numbered when Sedgwick County District Judge Paul Clark announced their sentences. The Kansas Supreme Court's 23-page June ruling found its 2022 orders affirming the death sentences were final judgments and that the brothers "have failed to demonstrate that the mandates left any outstanding capital-sentencing issues for the district court."
Both brothers remain on death row at El Dorado Correctional Facility, according to the Kansas Department of Corrections. Kansas has sentenced 15 men to death since the mid-1990s but has not executed an inmate since 1965.
The DA's office did not provide a timeline for when the K.S.A. 60-1507 proceedings will begin in district court.
