Trial date set in Smith murder case
ST. GEORGE – A trial date has been scheduled for Bloomington Hills murder suspect Brandon Perry Smith, 33, indicating a possible resolution in the 4 ½-year-old potential death penalty case may finally be near.
Defense attorney Gary Pendleton asked the court last week to plan for two weeks of testimony and evidence related to the slaying of 20-year-old Jerrica Christensen shortly before Christmas in 2010.
Judge G. Michael Westfall has scheduled a trial that will begin Sept. 28 and continue until Oct. 9, Westfall’s case manager said Tuesday.
The jury will not be sequestered during the trial and is expected to spend nights and the intervening weekend at home.
Two trial-planning events are scheduled on Sept. 2 and Sept. 16 to ensure no last-minute difficulties hinder the trial from taking place.
Smith is accused of beating and choking Christensen in a failed attempt to knock her out before ultimately cutting her throat with a pocket knife.
Smith allegedly left her to bleed to death in what prosecutors have characterized as an attempt to prevent her from testifying about the shootings of two other people in the downtown St. George home where her body was found.
Smith’s friend, Paul Clifford Ashton, pleaded guilty in 2013 to shooting 27-year-old Brandie Sue Dawn Jerden and her acquaintance, James Fiske, during a dispute at Ashton’s home that preceded Christensen’s murder.
He was convicted on state and federal murder charges related to Jerden and another victim, and is now serving life-without-parole.
Fiske survived the shootings and testified against Smith during a pretrial hearing, although his statements at times conflicted with what the prosecution says really happened.
Former Deputy County Attorney Brian Filter won a court ruling shortly after the hearing in October 2013 allowing the death penalty as a possible sentence if Smith is convicted by a jury at trial, despite Pendleton’s efforts in opposition.
Christensen’s mother, Ellen Hensley, has attended the court hearings throughout the process and has occasionally complained about her long wait for justice.
In December, Hensley organized a candlelight vigil on the 5th District Courthouse lawn on the anniversary of her daughter’s death, calling for swifter justice for crime victims and their family members.
“Four years ago, (my daughter) was murdered. Worse yet, she was murdered in a very brutal manner,” Hensley said at the time. “Too many times I’ve walked through the doors of the Washington County courthouse to attend hearings. Too many times, hearings have been reset or set at a much-delayed date. It has been one of the most frustrating and challenging experiences of my life, to say the least, as the entire court process is out of my hands.”
Pendleton filed a motion last month asking the court to bar any statements Smith made during his police questioning from being used as evidence in the trial. Pendleton argues Smith’s Miranda rights were violated by the St. George Police Department’s interview process.
Polls show that a large majority of Utahns support the use of the death penalty — more so than the rest of the country. Yet in many cases, Utah prosecutors are not pursuing the ultimate punishment.
Experts offer several reasons for not pursuing a death penalty, including the relatively new option of sentencing a person to prison without parole, the extremely long, expensive and complicated appeals process for anyone sentenced to death, and desires of some victims’ families to see an end to a criminal case for closure.
“What you want is a prosecutor who struggles with the death penalty, because it’s a decision to take somebody’s life,” Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill said during a 2013 interview. “It shouldn’t be something we do arbitrarily. It’s not something that we should be cavalier about. It is not something we should reach to with indiscretion.”
This week, the American Pharmacists Association took a stance opposing the distribution of the drugs used nationwide in lethal injections if the drugs are intended for that purpose.
Utah’s Legislature reinstated the use of a firing squad as a backup option for capital punishment cases if the drug cocktail is no longer available.
Rep. Paul Ray, who sponsored the bill, said he knew the announcement from the pharmacists association was coming, which contributed to his urgency in getting a backup plan in place.
“If they don’t want to sell the drug cocktail, fine,” he said Tuesday. “We’d prefer it, but now we have a means to carry out our executions.”
Critics of the measure say allowing firing squads again could drive away tourism industry business, although state tourism director Vicki Varela said in a statement she doesn’t think the firing squad presents a major problem because executions are rare and the possibility that the state will have to use its backup is remote.
“We regret anyone ever commits the heinous crime of aggravated murder to merit the death penalty, and we prefer to use our primary method of lethal injection when such a sentence is issued,” Gov. Gary Herbert’s spokesman, Marty Carpenter, said after Herbert signed the bill into law last week.
Enforcing death sentences is “the obligation of the executive branch,” however, Carpenter said.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
Follow Kevin Jenkins on Twitter, @SpectrumJenkins
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