MICHAEL MOORE and CI'ANDRIA COLE - 17 and 13 yo (8/07) - (Also wife, Cassandra Isom) - / Convicted: Stepfather, Kevin Charles Isom - Crown Point, IN

Kevin Charles Isom


10-15-2010, 07:16 AM


Death Penalty Trial: Jury Selection Begins For Kevin Isom in 2008 Indiana Murders of 3 Family Members

Prosecutors in Lake County, Ind., will seek the death penalty against a man accused of killing his family last summer.

Prosecutors say Kevin Isom shot his wife and her daughter and son inside the family's apartment in Gary on August 7, 2007. He was charged with three counts of first-degree murder for the deaths of 40-year-old Cassandra Isom, 17-year-old Michael Moore and 13-year-old Ci'Andria Cole.

According to a court affidavit, Isom allegedly told investigators that he shot his family because his wife was going to leave him. He also said she had been supporting the family on her own and that he had not been working.

Now Isom also faces four attempted murder charges for allegedly shooting at police officers who had responded to a hostage situation at the Lake Shore Dunes complex, where Isom allegedly killed his wife and stepchildren.

"Every death is traumatic to a police officer, but the death of children perhaps hit them more. For the officers who came under fire, it brings home the danger they face," said Gary Police Cmdr. Sam Roberts.

"We have to send a message to the public that we cannot allow anyone to harm our officers," added Gary Police Det. James Bond.

Isom is currently being held at the Lake County Jail in Crown Point, Ind.


http://www.cncpunishment.com/forums/showthread.php?418-Kevin-Charles-Isom-Indiana-Death-Row

Death penalty trial set for Gary man

Public to pay a portion of costs for his defense

CROWN POINT | A judge ordered a 42-year-old Gary man to stand trial early next year on death penalty murder charges that he killed his wife and two children.

Lake Criminal Court Judge Thomas Stefaniak also formally committed the public to pay for part of the trial's expense but warned Kevin C. Isom's attorneys there is a limit to what he will allow.

"I have to balance the taxpayers' interests with the defendant's rights to a fair trial. I don't want to open the county's checkbook to be pillaged by defense experts," Stefaniak said.

Isom, a former security officer, has pleaded not guilty to charges he fatally shot his wife of 12 years, Cassandra Isom, 40, and her two children, Michael Moore, 16, and Ci'Andria Cole, 13, on Aug. 6, 2007, at the family's Lakeshore Dunes Apartments in Gary's Miller section.

Stefaniak ordered Isom's trial to begin the week of Feb. 22.

Capital murder defendants are typically represented by the public defender's office because such high stakes cases require such expensive pretrial preparation that involves hiring at least two attorneys and a stable of defense investigators and experts. The courts have overturned death penalties because of poorly prepared defense strategies.

Veteran defense lawyers Nick Thiros and Alison Benjamin are defending Isom as private attorneys, but Thiros asked the judge to order the state to pay for a psychologist to examine whether Isom was insane at the time of the crime and a mitigation expert to look into Isom's background for mitigating factors that would be used to argue against Isom's execution if he is convicted.

Thiros said earlier Isom doesn't believe he killed anyone because he has no memory of the day, although he has reported seeing "disturbing images of brutality."

Police said neighbors heard shots in the defendant's and victims' apartment and a young girl shouting, "Daddy, don't do that." Police said someone fired shots at officers responding to the call before officers broke in and found the victims dead and Isom with a head wound inside.

Benjamin said the psychologist may cost $2,500 to $3,500 for the initial examination and an extra $1,800 each day if required to testify in court on his findings. The mitigation expert may be paid as much as $140 per hour.

Lake County public defender David Schneider said his office has plans to spend at least $200,000 in local tax dollars for death penalty defense involving this and other cases to be filed.

Stefaniak has scheduled a pretrial hearing Dec. 8 to determine whether to suppress a statement Isom made to police after the killings. The defense is arguing the confession wasn't voluntary and question the authenticity of Isom's signature on the confession.

http://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/lake/4bb87fed-9ffa-50d6-8a12-8a51ff896729.html

05-20-2011, 06:44 PM

Jury selection begins in Lake County's lone death penalty case

Jury selection in the county's only death penalty case started Friday.

Prospective jurors in the upcoming trial of Kevin Isom, 45, were questioned, in part, about their ability to participate in what potentially could be a three-week trial.

The court calendar for Lake Criminal Court Thomas Stefaniak Jr. is cleared for a two-week period beginning Sept. 26. A conviction could prolong the trial another week for the penalty phase of the trial.

Partial jury selection proceedings concluded Friday and were set to pick up on June 3.

Stefaniak ordered court staff in March to begin sending out notices to 500 people as the first step in gathering a jury pool.

Jurors will determine Isom's guilt in the shooting of his wife, Cassandra Isom, 40, and her two children, Michael Moore, 16, and Ci'Andria Cole, 13, on Aug. 6, 2007, at the family's Lakeshore Dunes Apartments in Miller.

Though the trial is still months away, Lake County public defenders Herbert Shaps and Casey McCloskey said in March they needed ample time to screen potential jurors to find a panel they believe will give Isom a fair trial.

Potential jurors fill out an extensive questionnaire and are examined by a jury specialist working for the defense team.

http://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/l...1755a914c.html

08-07-2011, 08:24 AM

Judge vows racial justice for murder defendant and prosecutors

Lake County's race history could be in the docket next month along with a Gary man going on trial for death penalty murder.

Lake Criminal Court Judge Thomas Stefaniak Jr., lawyers for Kevin Isom and the prosecutor's office have spent more than four months combing through a randomly selected list of 500 county residents for an impartial jury.

Isom is pleading not guilty to charges he fatally shot his wife of 12 years, Cassandra Isom, 40, and her two children, Michael Moore, 16, and Ci'Andria Cole, 13, on Aug. 6, 2007, at the family's Lakeshore Dunes apartment in Gary's Miller section.

The prosecutor will seek the death penalty when the trial begins Sept. 26.

Stefaniak acknowledged this week from the bench during a pretrial hearing jury selection will be difficult given the life-or-death stakes involved, and that Isom is a black man in a county where a debate remains whether he can get a fair verdict and sentence from the majority of county white residents.

To prove his zeal to provide a jury pool with a fair cross-section of the county's minority population, Stefaniak has been taking what he calls unprecedented steps.

He ordered two black women in that group of 500 who hadn't completed juror questionnaires into his courtroom Thursday to explain why. He ordered the arrest of one of them who didn't appear at Thursday's hearing but who showed up. Both filled out their questionnaires.

The judge further ordered his staff to investigate the demographics of an additional 44 no-shows.

"This is above and beyond the call of duty, but the more people who fill out jury qualification forms from this random pool gives the defendant the greatest chance of having a jury of his peers and to take prospective appeal issues off the table," Stefaniak said.

Stefaniak said he would not tolerate lawyers using race as an excuse to exclude whites from a jury.

The judge came under attack for his handling five years ago of jury selection in the death penalty trial of Darryl Jeter, a 24-year-old black Chicago man convicted of murdering 27-year-old Indiana State Police Trooper Scott Patrick in 2003.

Jeter's lawyers argued to the Indiana Supreme Court that Stefaniak denied Jeter a fair trial by thwarting their strategy to exclude white jurors.

They justified striking whites from the jury on grounds "racism was so inherent in the jury-selection process that especially in the case of a black defendant and a white victim, a black defendant has the greatest risk of receiving a death sentence when white males serve on the jury."

Stefaniak, who was speaking publicly about this for the first time, said he permitted Jeter's defense lawyers to exclude whites from the jury panel until four blacks were seated on the 12-member jurors -- a reflection that blacks constitute one-quarter of the county's population.

Stefaniak blocked further defense efforts to exclude white jurors he thought were racially motivated. That 2006 jury of two white males, two white females, two Hispanic males, two Hispanic females, three black females and one black male convicted Jeter, but refused to impose the death penalty.

The Indiana Supreme Court upheld Stefaniak's jury selection on grounds Jeter only was entitled to an impartial jury from a fair cross-section of the county's demographics, not some hard quota.

Isom has a different team of defense lawyers who has similar concerns about selecting a jury. Lake County public defender Casey McCloskey responded, "We are seeing the jury pool numbers skewed toward (white-dominated) south county."

Stefaniak responded, "I will do everything in my power to have a fair trial."

Read more: http://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/l...#ixzz1ULiC9eV3

02-01-2013, 09:11 AM

Detective testifies Isom said, 'I can't believe I killed my family'

The lead detective in the Kevin Isom murder case testified Thursday about a statement Isom gave police the day after his wife and two stepchildren were slain in the family's Gary apartment.

In that statement, Isom, then 41, is alleged to have admitted to the crime, saying, "I can't believe I killed my family. This can't be real."

Gary homicide Detective James Bond told jurors he was on call beginning at midnight the night Isom is alleged to have shot his family and fired on police during a standoff in August 2007.

The capital case is winding down its fourth week of trial with recent days focusing on complex forensic analysis of clothing gathered at the crime scene. Results showed Isom's DNA matched the DNA found on blue jeans, a T-shirt and a skirt.

On Thursday, Bond testified he arrived at the family's Lake Shore Dunes apartment about 3 a.m., finding the bodies of Isom's wife and teenage stepchildren in the area of the living room and kitchen.

Bond moved on to a bedroom to his right where he saw three weapons, bullet casings, handgun magazines, a bloodied T-shirt and a pair of blue jeans with a gun handle hanging out, he testified.

The remnants of tear gas in the air forced the detective into a hallway for fresh air, he said.

Bond said he conferred with other detectives and by the time he reached Methodist Hospitals Northlake Campus, where Isom had been taken for treatment, Isom had been treated and taken to a holding cell at the Gary Police Department.

Bond testified Isom was asleep and was not awakened. Bond took Isom's statement the next morning, he testified.

In a six-page statement, Isom describes an ordinary day, saying he went to the bank and a credit union before returning home about 1:45 p.m. Isom told Bond he poured himself a glass of gin and juice before sitting down to a movie with his stepdaughter.

When his wife came home from work about 5 p.m., Isom talked with a cousin by phone for about an hour, according to the statement.

"I wasn't drunk because I don't drink to get drunk," Isom told Bond, according to the statement.

Isom recalled his wife sitting in the living room, "sipping off his drink," according to his statement.

No one else was in the apartment at the time. There had been no fights and no threats, Isom told Bond.

He admitted to owning the guns because he had worked as a security guard.

He also admitted to his wife being upset by his being unemployed and having said a few days prior she would leave him.

The interview at one point stalled, Bond said, with Isom saying, "I can't say the rest because I can't believe it."

http://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/l...53708978a.html

02-05-2013, 05:35 PM


Lake Superior Court jurors took two hours and 14 minutes to find Kevin Isom guilty of the murders of his wife and stepchildren.

The Gary man faces the death penalty when the penalty phase begins Wednesday.

http://posttrib.suntimes.com/news/la...h-penalty.html

02-12-2013, 10:09 AM


Jury sentences convicted murderer Kevin Isom to death

A Lake County jury took less than two hours Friday to sentence convicted murderer Kevin Isom to death.

Lake Criminal Court Judge Thomas Stefaniak Jr., set Isom's formal sentencing for March 8.

Isom was convicted Tuesday of three counts of murder and three counts of criminal recklessness in connection with the events of Aug. 6-7, 2007, during which he killed his wife and two stepchildren, later firing on responding officers.

Found dead in the family's Miller apartment in Gary were Cassandra Isom, 40, and the stepchildren Isom had helped rear during the couple's 12-year marriage -- Michael Moore, 16, and Ci'Andria Cole, 13.

Each had suffered a shotgun blast and other multiple wounds tied to two handguns Isom admitted owning.

Jurors also found Isom guilty of three counts of criminal recklessness for shooting at responding officers during a subsequent standoff with police. Jurors were not charged with sentencing Isom on the three felonies. Sentencing on those counts will be imposed by Stefaniak. Each carries a sentence between six months and three years in prison.

Jurors, however, had the sole responsibility for determining the sentence on the three murder counts. Their options had included the death penalty, life without parole or a specific number of years to be imposed by Stefaniak.

Because of the possibility of the death penalty or life without parole, the trial was conducted over five weeks in two phases: the first phase to determine Isom's guilt and the second to determine his sentence.

The trial began Jan. 7.

The sentencing phase began Wednesday, the morning after Isom's conviction.

Jurors heard family members testify about Isom's background and character.

The grandson of an Arkansas sharecropper, Isom was reared primarily by his mother, Lula Isom, and his grandmother, Julia Isom. Also involved were numerous aunts, the sisters of Lula Isom, one of seven siblings.

That Isom was brought up primarily by women without the presence of a male role model was one of more than 30 mitigating factors jurors were asked to consider.

The others included his childhood in a gang-ridden Chicago housing project with all its associated risks before moving to Gary with his mother and a cousin.

By not only the family's accounts but also those of a variety of expert witnesses, Isom thrived regardless of the negative influences, the first male in his family to graduate from high school.

He held a variety of jobs as a security guard for some 15 years, mostly unsatisfactory to Isom, until landing a job where he found steady employment for four years.

Isom lost that job a month before the shootings. The accompanying strains in Isom's marriage provided motives for prosecutors throughout the trial as possible causes for the shootings.

Experts testified Isom suffered extreme emotional disturbance throughout his life and after the death of his family, so severe multiple experts testified Isom's claims to not remembering the shootings were valid.

Stefaniak revealed Wednesday a plea agreement for Isom was never viable specifically because Isom couldn't remember anything, so could not admit to any facts.

Forensic psychiatrist George Parker returned to the stand Wednesday for the second time during the trial, saying, "This is to him a mystery."

There had been no history of domestic violence.

Parker said Isom's symptoms of post-traumatic stress syndrome had abated over the years but he suffered from dis-associative amnesia.

Psychologist James Garbarino, of Loyola University Chicago, testified to the effects of violence on children and adolescents, saying the consequences can include difficulty in processing information, problems in school, emotional disconnection and the brain re-shaping itself.

Responses may differ, however, depending on the child's support system and temperament.


http://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/l...c9036ea7b.html

03-08-2013, 12:35 PM

Judge sets execution date for convicted killer Isom

Lake Superior Court Judge Thomas Stefaniak Jr., set a Feb. 5, 2014, execution date for a Gary man who murdered his wife and stepchildren.

Stefaniak imposed the sentence issued by the jury last month for Kevin Charles Isom.

During a five-week trial, Isom, 47, was convicted Feb. 5 of the 2007 murders of his wife of 12 years, Cassandra Isom, 40, and stepchildren Michael Moore, 16, and Ci’Andria Cole, 13. All three were shot multiple times, including with a shotgun.

Evidence presented by deputy prosecutors David Urbanski and Michelle Jatkiewicz showed that Cassandra Isom suffered a devastating shotgun blast to the head.

“This was the execution of a family,” Urbanski said.

Cassandra Isom’s brother, Eddrin Barnes, spoke for the family in a victim impact statement that described each of the victims and touched on the family’s wait of more than five years for justice.

http://posttrib.suntimes.com/news/la...ller-isom.html

05-27-2014, 12:50 AM

Isom triple homicide appeal headed to Indiana Supreme Court

INDIANAPOLIS | The appeal of a Gary man convicted of multiple counts of murder and condemned to three consecutive death sentences for the 2007 slaying of his wife and two stepchildren will be heard Thursday by the Indiana Supreme Court.

Last year, a Lake County jury took just two hours to find Kevin Isom, now 48, guilty of shooting Cassandra Isom, 40; Michael Moore, 16; and C'Andria Cole, 13, in the family's apartment in the 5700 block of Hemlock Ave.

The jury recommended Isom receive the death penalty following a separate punishment phase of the trial. In an unusual move, Lake Superior Judge Thomas Stefaniak Jr. issued Isom three consecutive death sentences to increase the chances Isom will die in prison.

Review by the high court's five justices is automatic in death penalty cases.

They've scheduled 60 minutes of oral arguments, one-and-a-half times more than non-death cases, split between Isom's public defender, Mark Bates, of Schererville, and Deputy Attorney General Kelly Miklos, representing the prosecution.

Bates has identified eight possible errors made during the trial that he claims warrants the Supreme Court's striking Isom's death sentence or awarding him a new trial.

Among them is the multiple death sentences issue. Bates writes in a court filing that the trial judge erred when he sentenced Isom to die three times, since a person can only die once.

Miklos responded by noting Indiana law permits judges to issue a penalty for each conviction, so Stefaniak was within his rights to sentence Isom to death for the murder of each of his family members.

Bates also plans to challenge how the jury was selected and will try to persuade the Supreme Court that several procedural rulings made by the trial judge were in error.

In addition, he'll argue the death penalty is not appropriate given Isom's "war zone" upbringing in Chicago housing projects.

"Kevin Isom's background, growing up neglected and in an urban war zone, cannot be constitutionally ignored when giving due regard to his character, the record and his amenability to rehabilitation," Bates said.

"Although his crime is horrible, it does not warrant the severest moral condemnation."

In her court filing, Miklos defends the work of the trial judge and prosecutor, and contends their actions and decisions comport with everything the law requires.

As for the appropriateness of Isom's death sentence, Miklos said it is entirely warranted by the brutal nature and seeming senselessness of his crime.

"(Isom's) decision to kill his defenseless family was motivated by a recent job loss and the resulting stress on the marriage; life circumstances that are well within the range of common stressors individuals face in everyday life," Miklos said. "There is no evidence that his family was aware of the threat that (Isom) posed that evening as the family gathered to watch television after their day."

Following oral arguments, a ruling by the Supreme Court is expected before the end of the year.

Isom is one of 12 men on death row at the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City. One woman also is under an Indiana death sentence, but she is incarcerated in Ohio on a separate murder conviction.

Indiana has executed 20 people since the death penalty was revived in 1977. During the same period, 56 others initially condemned to death have had their sentences reduced or convictions overturned.

http://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/l...8289ce04f.html