User:Theleekycauldron/Killings of Kendal Ashmore and Kathy Anne Brown

On March 17, 1977, Kendal Ashmore and Kathy Anne Brown were kidnapped and killed as part of an extortion scheme by Larry Leon Chaney.

Chaney's appeals resulted in Heckler v. Chaney, a landmark case heard by the Supreme Court of the United States that set new precedent in administrative law.

Crime and trial

On March 17, 1977, Kendal Ashmore and Kathy Anne Brown were kidnapped, last seen in Tulsa, Oklahoma; Ashmore, 35 years old, was the wife of Phil Ashmore, a wealthy builder and the former chairman of the board of the city of Jenks' bank, employing 21-year-old Brown as a horse trainer. Phil received a ransom call that night, demanding $500,000 ($2.5 million in 2023 dollars) in unmarked $100 bills at a rodeo ground in Jenks by the end of the next day. He did as requested, but the money was not retreived; a call to Phil later that night said that he had taken the money to the wrong location. A third call included a death threat to Kendal; authorities traced that call to a trailer in Jenks owned by 34-year-old Larry Leon Chaney, arresting him on March 18 or March 19. Kendal Ashmore and Brown were later found dead on Chaney's land north of Sallisaw; an autopsy found that they had been strangled within a few hours of the kidnapping.

Chaney pled not guilty to two charges of kidnapping and first-degree murder, and was held without bond. He was tried in a Tulsa County district court for the murder of Kendal Ashmore and convicted within the year, continuing to assert his innocence. He was sentenced to be executed on December 7 by lethal injection, the second person to receive that sentence under Oklahoma's new law authorizing the procedure.

Appeals

Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals

Chaney unsuccessfully appealed his sentence to the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals, alleging prosecutorial errors. These included failing to move the trial venue amid what his lawyer, Allen Smallwood, described as a "deluge of publicity"; a warrantless search and arrest; and prejudicial statements made before the trial. Tulsa County District Attorney S. M. Fallis Jr. responded that the motion to move the trial was duly considered and the jurors were monitored as to whether the publicity had affected them; that the warrantless search and arrest were justified by the emergency situation created by the death threat; and that some effort was made to curtail prejudicial statements. Chaney also requested that the charge for murdering Brown be thrown out on double jeopardy grounds. He also challenged the lethal injection law used to sentence him, alleging the statute to be vague and arbitrary; Assisstant Attorney General David Lee responded, "if there's ever been a case that the death penalty [should be imposed in], then this is the case".

On May 15, 1980, the appeals court upheld Chaney's sentence and the law used to impose it. The warrantless search was justified on the grounds of emergency, given the death threat. The court also wrote that the law was sufficient to prevent the jury from handing down an arbitrary sentence. Chaney was successful in getting the second murder charge dismissed, as for the murder of Kendal Ashmore, however, Chaney had exhausted his state court appeal options. On January 27, 1981, the court issued a stay of Chaney's scheduled execution to give him time to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, extending a six-month stay that had nearly run out.

• First appeal to SCOTUS: [1], [2] (and more on state court criminal appeal)
• Stay based on new evidence: [3] [4] [5]
  • request for a new trial: [6] [7]
    • appeal to the supreme court: [8] [9]
• execution date rescheduled: [10]
• possibly tie to larger attitudes on crime: Burger Court book, [11]