By Audrey Stanton
Register-Herald Reporter
June 13, 2007 12:14 am
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What had been scheduled Tuesday as a pre-trial motions hearing in a 6-year-old Raleigh County murder case turned into a plea hearing that sent a 20-year-old man to prison to begin serving his first of two consecutive life sentences.
Robert Edward O’Hara told Circuit Judge John Hutchison he was guilty of first-degree murder, aggravated robbery and kidnapping with harm and death in the 2001 murder of 75-year-old Blanche Dempsey of Maxwell Hill.
The plea agreement also included punishment — life in prison for murder, with mercy; life in prison for kidnapping, with mercy; and 20 years for aggravated robbery. The two life sentences are to run consecutively, and the robbery sentence will run currently. O’Hara will be eligible for parole in 25 years.
“It’s been six long years, and I’d like to go head and just face my charges and get it done with,” O’Hara said early in the hearing. “It’s time to stand up and take my punishment like a man.”
The plea brought an end to an ordeal that began in 2001 when two 14-year-old boys carried out what may very well be Raleigh County’s most heinous crime against an elderly person.
Chief deputy prosecutor Kristen Keller said O’Hara and co-defendant Devin Shrewsberry had gotten in trouble at school that day, Oct. 29, 2001, and were planning to run away. O’Hara had mowed Dempsey’s lawn, so he knew the woman described by Keller as “a very lovely and wholly innocent victim of an incredibly cruel murder.”
O’Hara convinced her to let them inside her house, and there, the boys overpowered the small woman, Keller said. Shrewsberry sat on her while O’Hara wrapped and tied her in cords and gagged her mouth with a towel.
“The actual cause of death was homicide,” Keller said. “She suffocated with a plastic bag tied over her head.”
After that, Keller continued, the boys placed the chair holding Dempsey in front of her oven and turned on the broiler with hope a fire would destroy any evidence of their crime. They ransacked the house, took various items, stole cash from her purse and left in Dempsey’s car.
After stopping for gas, the boys drove the car to Mount Hope to sell Dempsey’s property and spend the night, Keller said. When a third party returned the stolen vehicle to the Dempsey home, police found evidence that quickly led them to the young defendants.
Tuesday, O’Hara answered with a strong “yes, sir,” when Hutchison asked him to confirm various parts of Keller’s description of the crimes.
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The court system transferred Shrewsberry and O’Hara to adult status shortly after their arrests. And in December 2002, Shrewsberry received a life sentence with mercy for his guilty plea to murder. He will be eligible for parole in 2017.
But for six years, questions about O’Hara’s mental status postponed trial date after trial date. Those very questions, Keller and defense attorney Kyle Lusk agreed, were what prompted Tuesday’s agreement.
O’Hara told the judge he had been treated for schizophrenia, multiple personalities, bipolar disorder and that he suffered from manic depression. He also said he did not take his prescribed medicine.
Prior court hearings presented medical evidence that O’Hara claimed to hear a voice belonging to someone named “Larry,” who sometimes told him what to do. O’Hara told Hutchison Larry was not directing him to enter the guilty pleas; he said he was in control and was pleading guilty because he wanted to.
Pat Lamp, an attorney appointed to oversee issues related to O’Hara’s mental health, told the court he believed O’Hara understood Tuesday’s proceedings, but Lamp repeatedly stated that O’Hara’s understanding applied only to today and that there was “some question about his mental status.”
“Today he understands what is going on, and he understands the consequences of his actions,” Lamp said.
Lusk told the court he had more than 7,000 pages of psychiatric records on his client, and that even though he believed fully in a defense of mental defect, he also believed it was in O’Hara’s best interest to take the plea agreement.
If a jury were to convict him on all the charges, he could be in prison for life with no possibility of parole.
The state, on the other hand, had just as many medical reports, also from credible psychiatric professionals. But as witnesses, the state’s psychiatric experts would wholly contradict the defense’s psychiatric experts.
“We have one group of psychiatrists who will say that a hallucination named Larry told him to do it ... Another group believes that is crap and that the defendant is absolutely criminally responsible,” Keller said.
She said she feared a jury that heard conflicting evidence from qualified experts may be confused to the point it could not make a decision and the result would be a mistrial, which could further torment the victim’s family and accomplish nothing.
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“It is the state’s contention that this defendant should die in prison,” Keller said just before explaining why the state made the agreement. Among the reasons: The conflicting experts and the fact that jurors are sympathetic to a defendant’s age.
“He was 14 at the time of the crime,” Keller said. “The state has a substantial concern that jurors tend to give mercy when people are young.”
She also noted the “torture” the victim’s family had endured during six years of tie-ups in the legal system.
One of those relatives, the victim’s daughter-in-law, was present. Hutchison asked her if the arrangement was acceptable to her.
“It’s time for it to be over,” Sharon Dempsey told the judge.
“Can you live with this?” Hutchison asked her.
“I can live with it,” she said, visibly upset.
O’Hara asked to address her. Hutchison instructed him to address the court instead.
“I’m a believer of the Lord Jesus Christ. ... I took a woman’s life six years ago, when I was a kid,” O’Hara said. Then, in a confusing way, he said he believed the Bible told him a victim’s family had the right to decide his penalty and that if they didn’t think this sentence was enough they should impose what they believe he deserves.
Hutchison explained he imposed sentence, not the victim’s family.
O’Hara will be transferred from Southern Regional Jail into state Division of Corrections custody. He has been given credit for time served since his arrest in 2001.
— E-mail: bnaudrey@register-herald.com
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