SLADE (Murdered), DYLAN (Murdered) and SHASTA GROENE - 13, 9 and 8 yo (2005)/ Convicted: Joseph Duncan III - Boise ID

Judge: Duncan can be examined by government expert

Originally published: Sep 10, 2012 - 4:58 pm
Updated Sep 10, 2012 - 4:58 pm
Associated Press

BOISE, Idaho (AP) - A federal judge says prosecutors can have their own psychologist interview a convicted child killer as they fight to prove he was competent when he waived his right to appeal his death sentence.

But U.S. District Judge Edward Lodge said in a ruling last week that he won't necessarily let them present any of the expert's findings in court _ that will be decided down the road.

Joseph Edward Duncan III was sentenced to death in 2008 after admitting he kidnapped and tortured two northern Idaho children before killing one of them. He gave up his appeals, but his former attorneys fought the sentence on his behalf, and last year the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered Lodge to hold a retroactive competency hearing to determine if Duncan was mentally competent back in 2008 when he waived his rights.

That ruling set into motion a complicated legal process with high stakes: Duncan, though convicted of five murders spanning three states in three separate courts, has only been sentenced to death in Idaho's federal case, and that sentence is now in jeopardy.

During his 2008 sentencing hearing, federal prosecutors said Duncan snatched Dylan Groene and his 8-year-old sister from their northern Idaho home on a spring day in 2005 after killing their older brother, mother and mother's fiance. Duncan kept the children at a remote Montana campsite for weeks before killing Dylan and returning with Dylan's sister to Coeur d'Alene, where he was arrested.

After Duncan was given three death sentences in Idaho's federal court for Dylan's murder and other federal crimes, prosecutors in northern Idaho's Kootenai County opted not to seek the death penalty for the murders of Slade and Brenda Groene and Mark McKenzie, and a state court judge sentenced Duncan to life in prison.

Likewise, in a subsequent trial for the 1997 murder of 11-year-old Anthony Martinez in Riverside County, Calif. _ which Duncan confessed after his arrest in Idaho _ the local district attorney opted not to seek the death penalty after talking with Martinez' family and noting that Duncan already faced death three times over from Idaho's federal court case.

John Hall, a spokesman for the District Attorney's office in Riverside County, Calif., said Monday they were confident that Duncan's death penalty would be upheld. The Riverside County prosecutors are working with the U.S. Attorney's Office in Idaho for the competency hearing, he said.

The case will hinge on Duncan's state of mind about four years ago. When Duncan first decided to represent himself in 2008, his attorneys claimed he wasn't competent. The judge, Lodge, had him examined by a local psychologist who found that while Duncan's thoughts were "somewhat unusual," Duncan wasn't delusional and that he'd waived his right to an attorney knowingly and voluntarily.

But Duncan's attorneys have argued that despite sometimes giving the appearance of being capable of rational thought, Duncan is mentally ill and didn't have the capacity to make a rational decision about whether to waive his appeals.

"Like most delusional individuals, Mr. Duncan's capacity for rational thought varies across different decision-making domains," his attorney Michael Burt wrote in a court document filed late last week.

If Lodge finds that Duncan wasn't competent when he gave up his appeals, the judge will have to assess whether he was competent during his sentencing hearing. That could lead to a new sentencing hearing, or a new sentence of life in prison.

"In this particular case, as the Court is well aware, the Court's decision may very well determine whether Mr. Duncan lives or dies," Burt wrote.

U.S. Attorney Wendy Olson has pointed out in court filings that established case law clearly shows that a pattern of consistent, rational behavior, thinking and decision-making over a long period of time tends to show at a defendant's decision-making process at any one time was rational.

Duncan was examined by several experts in the months before and after his decision to waive his appeal, Olson noted, and the courts' own expert as well as a California court found Duncan to be competent.

The competency hearing is set for January 2013.

http://mynorthwest.com/174/735174/Judge-Duncan-can-be-examined-by-government-expert

Physician: Dylan Groene suffered intense pain before death

By Associated Press
Published: Aug 20, 2008 at 1:12 PM PDT
Last Updated: Nov 21, 2008 at 12:57 AM PDT

BOISE (AP) - A boy who was kidnapped, tortured and shot by Joseph Edward Duncan III likely suffered excruciating pain before his death, a forensic pediatrician told jurors Wednesday.

Dr. Sharon Cooper's testimony in U.S. District Court followed the presentation of a taped interview in which Shasta Groene, 8 at the time, related grim details of Duncan's sexual abuse and slaying of her older brother, Dylan. Groene, who also said she was sexually abuse and tortured, told the jury Duncan accidentally shot her brother in the stomach with a shotgun and then blasted him in the head after deciding the boy's life couldn't be saved.

Cooper said the description of the boy's injury - he was eviscerated, his sister said, with his "guts" hanging out - indicated it was "a very potentially salvageable injury."

"We see this on the battlefield fairly often," Cooper told the jury. "They can live for several hours like that."

Cooper also said Duncan may have had enough time to get Dylan Groene to a hospital from the remote western Montana campsite where the shooting occurred.

While in the Army, Cooper was assigned to child abuse cases on military installations in Hawaii and the Pacific Rim before becoming chief of pediatrics at Fort Bragg, N.C. She said she performed a medical assessment of Shasta Groene after her rescue, interviewed her father, Steve Groene, and reviewed interviews of the girl by law enforcement officers.

Duncan pleaded guilty in December to 10 federal counts in the 2005 kidnapping of the Coeur d'Alene-area children and the murder of the boy. A jury must decide whether Duncan should be executed or spend life in prison without parole.

Duncan, acting as his own attorney in the sentencing phase, suggested in cross-examining Cooper that the girl was exaggerating her brother's injury.

"How much in your experience do children tend to elaborate or exaggerate and fill in details ... especially after a traumatic experience like that?" Duncan asked.

Children who exaggerate are typically much younger, between 4 and 6, and lack the vocabulary to describe what happened to them, Cooper said.

Duncan asked whether the "guts" mentioned by the girl could have been RamDon noodles the boy had eaten earlier.

Cooper said that was unlikely because chewed-up noodles wouldn't look like intestines. Besides, she told the jury, food would spill out of an abdominal wound only if the stomach also had been pierced.

Later in the morning, FBI Agent Mike Stoke told the jury he found a piece of Dylan Groene's skull at the campsite. Some jurors covered their mouths and looked down as the fragment, contained in a plastic evidence envelope, was displayed in court.

In opening statements last week, U.S. Attorney Tom Moss told the jury that the skull fragment was the only part of the boy's remains that were found at the campsite that was intact enough to yield results in a DNA test.

Jurors also were told by FBI firearms expert John Web that he could not get the shotgun with which the boy was shot to fire accidentally in "drop tests." Web added that the shotgun required five pounds of pressure on the trigger to fire.

Duncan bludgeoned to death the children's older brother, mother and her fiance at their home before abducting the pair in May 2005, setting off a nationwide manhunt. Duncan has pleaded guilty in state court to the killings at the house.

While it is The Associated Press' policy not to identify victims of sexual assault in most cases, the search for Shasta and Dylan Groene was so heavily publicized that their names are widely known.

Duncan, formerly from Tacoma, Wash., has a long string of arrests and convictions for crimes ranging from car theft to rape and molestation. He is suspected in the slayings of two half-sisters from Seattle in 1996 and is charged with killing a young boy in Riverside County, Calif., in 1997.

http://www.klewtv.com/news/27192679.html