Anne Pressly News Updates Only - No Discussion Please...

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Dr. Theresa McBride, the emergency room doctor, told jurors that Pressly’s blood pressure was undetectable, she couldn’t breathe on her own and her pulse was too weak to be picked up on a monitor. Pressly had suffered facial fractures that made the structure of her face unstable, the doctor told jurors.

“I was not sure of her brain function,” she testified.

Shown a photo taken of Pressly before the attack, Mc-Bride said she wouldn’t recognize her as the woman she treated, saying Pressly’s eyes were so bruised she couldn’t see them.

Defense attorney Katherine Streett challenged McBride’s medical qualifications, pointing out that the physician, who now works for a hospital in Hawaii, has a doctor of osteopathy degree, not the more widely known doctor of medicine degree.

Osteopathic physicians use a holistic, patient-centered approach to diagnosing and treating illness and injuries, according to the American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine. There are 55,000 practicing osteopathic physicians in the country.

There are only “subtle differences” between the medical fields, McBride said during her hour on the witness stand, and both are licensed by the same regulating agencies and are required to meet the same standards to practice medicine. She has also taught emergency medicine at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, McBride noted.

Jury selection in the case concluded at 1:20 p.m. Wednesday, about 40 minutes before opening statements began. Eleven jurors had been seated during jury selection Monday and Tuesday, but one of those was excused Wednesday morning after he decided he couldn’t impose the death penalty. Two jurors and two alternates were then picked for the panel of six men and six women.

Circuit Judge Chris Piazza said he expects the trial to last through next week. Proceedings are to resume at 9:30 a.m. today. Prosecutors expect to call at least 29 witnesses. They called five witnesses Wednesday.

This article was published today at 5:34 a.m.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 11/05/2009

[TJEddie]

Thursday, November 05, 2009 - 17:24:38

Vance Trial -- UPDATE

In the classic story "The Cask of Amontillado" by Edgar Allan Poe, a prisoner is slowly bricked up alive inside a vault. Today, prosecutors kept laying on the bricks in the case of Curtis Lavelle Vance, accused of capital murder in the rape and beating death of KATV anchorwoman Anne Pressly. The wall they are building may be an insurmountable obstacle for the defense team trying to save their client from the death penalty.

The day began with testimony from members of the Little Rock Police Department's Crime Scene Search Unit, who testified about evidence collection in Pressly's home. Of particular interest to the defense was the way fingerprints are gathered at a crime scene. The root of that interest, said Deputy Prosecutor John Johnson in a short conversation during a break in proceedings, is that no prints from Vance were found in Pressly's house, and the defense plans to eventually make an issue of that.

Testimony next came from the Marianna biology teacher who was raped by a stranger in her home on April 21, 2008. Jurors and spectators sat riveted as she stoically described being grabbed from behind in her living room after emerging from the shower while wearing only a bathrobe. In one particularly poignant moment, the victim mouthed the words "It's okay" to her parents, who were sitting on the other side of the courtroom. She said that after raping her on the couch while telling her that he would kill her if she tried to look at him, her attacker stole $3 and a cell phone.

Later today, Krista Hall, a serologist, and Mary Simonson, a forensic DNA examiner, both with the Arkansas State Crime Lab, described how they tested fluids recovered during a rape examination of the Marianna victim -- tests which revealed her assailant's DNA profile. That profile, they said, eventually made a "high stringency hit" with the DNA profile of Curtis Vance, linking Vance to both the Marianna rape and DNA found on Anne Pressly's body to a certainty of one in billions.

Defense attorney Stephanie Streett countered by asking Simonson about possible cross-contamination of evidence while it is being reviewed at the Crime Lab. Simonson said that in addition to having their results "peer reviewed" -- double-checked by other DNA investigators -- specialists are required to run control samples during testing to assure that there's no contamination.

The day ended with jurors listening to an audio recording of an interview between Little Rock Police detectives and Vance taken in Marianna while detectives where there investigating leads in the Pressly murder. In the audio recording, Vance denies that he was in Little Rock on Oct. 20, 2008, and says that he has never had sex with anyone from Little Rock.

Still to come: the audio and video recordings seen and heard during pre-trial suppression hearings, in which Vance admits much more.

Testimony resumes tomorrow at 9:30 a.m.
Posted by David Koon | Permalink | Comments [ 0 ]

http://www.arktimes.com/blogs/arkansasblog/

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Vance trial focus on earlier attack

Victim, key in DNA link, testifies

LITTLE ROCK — The DNA that led to Curtis Lavelle Vance being charged in Anne Pressly’s slaying came from an attack on a Marianna schoolteacher who told a Pulaski County jury Thursday that she was raped by a burly intruder who had a distinctive voice.

Kristen Edwards took the witness stand on the second day of testimony in the capital-murder trial of the Marianna man accused of killing Little Rock TV news anchor Pressly.

The six men and six women on the jury also heard Vance’s voice for the first time as prosecutors played a statement he gave denying that he was in Little Rock on the October 2008 weekend that Pressly was attacked, and they heard testimony from a state forensic DNA examiner that Vance’s DNAmatched that extracted from semen found on Edwards.

“We can say the DNA identified as originating from ... Curtis Vance in all scientific certainty,” examiner Mary Simonson with the Arkansas Crime Laboratory testified.

The probability of randomly finding someone else with the same DNA signature is one out of 10-to-the-19thpower, Simonson testified. That is one out of 10 quintillion people. The population of the earth is about 6.8 billion, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Testimony from Simonson and Crime Lab serologist Krista Hall, who processed the DNA evidence from the Marianna rape, also revealed that a backlog of cases last year delayed by about six months the processing of evidence from Edwards’ April 2008 rape.

But Simonson told jurors that the DNA from Edwards’ then-unknown attacker immediately matched DNA taken from Pressly’s home as soon as she entered it into the federal DNA database on Nov. 24.

She said she was able to match a DNA sample that Vance supplied police on Nov. 25 to the rape DNA on Nov. 26, which led to his arrest a few hours later.

Prosecuting Attorney Larry Jegley is seeking the death penalty for Vance regarding 26-year-old Pressly’s beating death. Vance is also charged with rape, residential burglary and theft regarding the October 2008 attack at Pressly’s home in Little Rock’s Heights neighborhood. The KATV, Channel 7, reporter died five days after she was found unconscious in her bed by her mother.

Vance was arrested about a month after Pressly’s death, linked to her killing by DNA evidence found in her bedroom. He reportedly has admitted to beating Pressly in a pair of recorded interviews with detectives that will be played during the trial, possibly as soon as today.

His defense attorneys are challenging the DNA findings, suggesting that the genetic evidence was mishandled by examiners, and have argued that Vance was tricked into making incriminating statements to police.

Prosecutors spent Thursday morning showing the jury photographs of Pressly’s bloodstained bed and the blood-spattered walls and ceiling of her room as they reviewed evidence collected at her Club Road home in the days after her assault.

Jurors are set to hear from the DNA examiner who processed evidence from the Pressly crime scene when the trial before Circuit Judge Chris Piazza resumes today at 9:30 a.m. The trial is expected to last through next week.

The bulk of Thursday’s testimony was about the April 2008 rape of the 33-year-old Edwards, who has spoken publicly about the attack. Vance has been charged with rape, aggravated robbery and theft in Lee County in the attack on Edwards, a former Lee High School biology teacher,but he has yet to stand trial on those charges.

Prosecutors are using evidence in that case in the capital-murder trial under court rules that allow them to show motive and planning of other crimes even if the allegations have yet to be proved in court.

continued below

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Edwards, who now works as a NASA education consultant in Washington, D.C., nervously winced when chief deputy prosecutor John Johnson greeted her as she took the witness stand Thursday.

She told jurors that she couldn’t identify the man who ambushed her in her living room on April 21, 2008, shortly before 6 a.m. She said she was in a blue bathrobe after a shower, with her wet hair wrapped in a towel, when a man grabbed her as she went to get coffee. She said she saw the assailant only out of the corner of her eye.

“I noticed something wrong, and I turned to the side and he came at me,” she said. “His voice was definitely male, angry and loud.”

The attacker put one hand around her waist and the other over her mouth, warning her that he had a gun and would kill her if she looked at him, Edwards testified, blinking nervously at times. Throughout the attack, the rapist alternated between threats to kill her if she looked at him and demands for money, she testified, describing how he manhandled her onto her couch.

“I just didn’t fight. I didn’t want to die,” she said, describing the assailant as much taller than her 5 feet 4 inches. “He half-lifted me, half-pushed me over the couch. I’m not a little girl.”

Facedown on her couch, struggling to breathe, Edwards heard the sound of a belt being removed and a zipper undone, she told the jurors. His first rape attempt failed, she said, and he continued his threats and demands.

“I think it was just an awkward position,” she testified. “He was talking and asking me, ‘What do you do? Do you have any money?’”

After raping her, Edwards said, the man thrust her purse in her face.

“I could hear rustling, then my purse came up in front of me,” she said. “I had three dollars in cash, three singles.”

Angered by her meager funds, the attacker asked about how much money she had in the bank. Edwards testified that he seemed to get angrier when she told him that she wasn’t sure.

“When he realized I only had the three dollars, [his voice] became angry and loud,” she said. “I thought ‘I did everything he asked, and he’s going to kill me.’”

Instead, the intruder guided her to a rear utility room where he locked her inside before rummaging through the home, Edwards said, describing how she could hear his movements.

When she heard her front door slam, Edwards said, she ran out the back door of the locked room to a neighbor’s home wearing only her robe. But no one was home, so Edwards went back into her own house, seeking her car keys and cell phone. Her phone and its charger were missing from her bedroom dresser, she testified, but she was able to drive to a friend’s home who called police.

Directed by prosecutors, Edwards looked Vance in the eye as she acknowledged that she couldn’t identify him as her attacker and had never seen him before, despite living only a couple of blocks away from him. Vance, wearing a blue blazer, yellow-patterned tie with a blue shirt and khaki pants, had been taking notes, but looked up tomeet her gaze, wrinkling his brow slightly.

Defense attorney Lott Rolfe IV emphasized in his cross-examination of Edwards that her attacker hadn’t beaten her, no matter how mad he got.

“You cannot say for certain it was Curtis Vance you saw on this day,” Rolfe said. “And this individual did not hit, strike or punch you.”

“Did you want to be ... raped on that day?” Johnson, the prosecutor, asked Edwards as soon as Rolfe ended his questioning. “Why didn’t you fight?”

“Because he told me he had a gun and he would kill me,” Edwards responded, describing herself as “100 percent compliant” with her rapist’s demands.

“Why are you still alive?” Johnson asked.

“Because I did what he told me to do,” she answered.

Little Rock detective J.C. White, who first interviewed Vance on Nov. 25, when Vance was considered only a “person of interest,” not a suspect, in Pressly’s slaying, told jurors that he questioned Vance at the suggestion of Marianna investigators. Vance met with police voluntarily and willingly gave a DNA sample, he said.

Prosecutors played the 27-minute recorded interview for jurors. Vance, his voice a rumbling bass over the speakers, told the detective thathe hadn’t been in Little Rock when Pressly was attacked. He said he’d spent most of his time job hunting.

“I was looking for a change in my life because I had just turned 28,” he said. “I know I was really looking for a job, and that was all on my mind.”

Vance told White that he avoided Little Rock “because with all of the gangs ... you don’t really want to go around Little Rock.”

White testified that hetold Vance that his name had come up in a rape case, but Vance denied being unfaithful to his girlfriend.

“I have had no outside relationship with no woman, no man, no nothing, no kind of way,” Vance said.

“Is there any reason why your DNA is going to come back on any of our cases,” White asked during the interview.

“A thousand percent, it should be on ... nothing at all,” Vance responded.

This article was published today at 5:46 a.m.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 11/06/2009

[TJEddie]

Friday, November 06, 2009 - 16:02:22

Vance Trial -- Friday

This morning's testimony in the capital murder trial of Curtis Vance centered on evidence measured in microns, as attorneys questioned employees of the Arkansas State Crime Lab about fluids and hairs found during the investigation into the murder of KATV anchorwoman Anne Pressly.

First on the stand was Lisa Channell, chief criminalist for the Crime Lab, who testified about hair evidence, and the efforts to isolate a DNA sample from items found at the crime scene and swabs collected during a rape examination of Pressly.

Channell said that though the swabs tested positive for a semen-specific antigen known as P-30, she was not able to find any sperm cells, and her testing was not able to connect the contents of the rape kit to a suspect. The swabs were later submitted for what is known as Y-STR testing, which detects the presence of only male DNA (an expert on Y-STR DNA is scheduled to testify this afternoon. According to Deputy Prosecutor John Johnson, that testimony will connect Vance to the contents of the Pressly rape kit).

Channell's testimony next turned to the issue of hairs and hair fragments collected from Pressly's bathrobe, pillowcase, and bed linens. When compared to hairs collected from Curtis Vance, Channell said, some of the hairs recovered at the scene were "microscopically similar" to Vance's hair, though -- under cross examination by Katherine Streett -- Channell did admit "we cannot say this hair came from this person to the exclusion of all others." During questioning by prosecutors, Channell later said that if she was allowed to take a sample of hair from everyone in the courtroom and microscopically examine it, she could determine whose head it came from.

Channell also testified about processing the evidence collected from the 1995 Chevrolet Monte Carlo owned by Curtis Vance at the time of the Pressly murder, including foam from seat cushions, the results of a floor vaccuuming and fabric swatches from the seats. Channell testified that she was not able to detect blood or semen on any of these items. Defense attorneys asked pointed questions about whether blood or semen could linger on such items, possibly suggesting another avenue they plan to take during their case. Namely, that Vance could not have committed so bloody a crime without leaving some trace evidence behind in his car. Deputy Prosecutor John Johnson countered by pointing out that the testing of the items taken from Vance's car was done almost two months after the murder. He also asked Channell whether soap and water could dilute a forensic sample to the point of it being undetectable -- Channell agreed it could -- and whether or not a car-wash vacuum would pick up the same evidence as those used by investigators. Channell said it would.

Next to the stand was Melissa Myhand, the Crime Lab's chief forensic DNA examiner. In addition to talking about the results of various "tape lifts" taken at the crime scene which revealed a mixture of DNA profiles, Myhand said that a single hair found on Pressly's bed -- a hair designated "E-4" in forensic reports -- was a match for the DNA profile of Curtis Vance, to a certainty of 1 in 1.5 quadrillion.

When the trial reconvened at 2:00 this afternoon, the jury heard testimony from Mary Robinette, a DNA expert with the Arkansas Crime Lab. Robinette testified that Y-STR DNA samples taken from Pressly's bed sheets and from materials in the rape kit taken by police were consistent with the DNA profile of Curtis Vance. Y-STR DNA targets male chromosomes in mixed samples.

Vance's attorney, Katherine Streett, said she thought Robinette's testimony was confusing. She then pursued a line of questioning trying to cast doubt on the Y-STR DNA results. Streett made the point that although the Y-STR DNA matched Vance's DNA profile, it did not positively identify Vance. The DNA, she argued and Robinette agreed, could have come from any male in Vance's lineage, ranging back for generations.

"Does any of your testing positively identify Curtis Vance," Streett asked. Robinette answered no. The prosecution quickly followed up by asking, "But is it consistent with his DNA profile?" Robinette answered, "Yes."

Robinette was on the stand for approximately 45 minutes. After her testimony, Judge Chris Piazza let the jurors go for the weekend. "We've all been through the ringer," Piazza said. He reminded jurors not to talk about the case or watch or read any news reports. He thanked them for their attentiveness and then adjourned.

The trial will continue Monday morning at 9:30.

Posted by David Koon on November 6, 2009 04:02 PM | Permalink

http://www.arktimes.com/blogs/arkans...al_friday.aspx

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Curtis Vance Murder Trial: Day 5 Testimony About Evidence Concludes

Testimony about DNA evidence collected was the focus for the better half of the day Friday in the Curtis Vance murder trial, the man accused of killing KATV anchorwoman Anne Pressly.

The chief criminologist at the Arkansas Crime Laboratory told jurors that hair similar to that of Curtis Vance was found in bedding and on a bathrobe belonging to Pressly.

In testimony Friday, Lisa Channel acknowledged that hairs are easily transferred and that she couldn't guarantee that the hair found in Pressly's bedroom came from Vance.

The witness also said that a swab taking during a rape examination tested positive for semen.

Channel testified only about forensic evidence, not DNA.

Melissa Myhand is the State Crime Lab chief forensic DNA examiner. She testified that one strand of hair met the accuracy threshold in DNA testing to scientifically prove that it is Vance's.

She says that while there were several hairs collected from Pressly's home, only one still had a root, so it was the only one that could be sent for DNA testing. She says that hair is conclusively Vance's.

Myhand testified that the semen collected from the sheets did not meet this accuracy threshold. She also said that a partial DNA profile found on the sheets could not exclude Vance. However, during cross-examination, she told the defense that because it was a limited profile that one out of seven African Americans could not be excluded if tested.

Myhand said that they couldn't develop a complete DNA profile on the seminal fluid because they believe it could have been pre-ejaculation fluid, meaning there was no sperm present.

Another DNA expert testified about the evidence and reinforced Myhand's testimony before court ended for the day at just before 3 p.m.

The courtroom has remained packed with media, family and friends. Several of Pressly's family and friends are recognizable by something they wear in her memory.

"One side is mostly the press the other is friends and family of Anne Pressly; you can tell the difference because they are all wearing this fuchsia bracelet with her name and birth date on them," Pressly's friend David Bazzel said. "I'm glad I can roll up my sleeve and I love for Vance to turn around and see it so we make sure he knows that she's not going away."

Underneath Pressly's name the bracelets reads "Love ya, mean it." That's something friends and family say she used to say often. They say shades of pink were her favorite colors.

Court resumes Monday morning. Judge Chris Piazza said they had taken a lot of information in already, so instead of continuing, they should enjoy the rest of the day and the Razorbacks game.

Friday the defense filed two motions regarding Vance's Department of Human Services file. In it, they say due to the sensitive materials in the report they want the courtroom cleared during this DHS testimony. According to the motion, the file includes details of Vances' past dating back before he was 18.

Court wrapped up Thursday with testimony from lead investigator Detective J.C. White with the Little Rock Police Department. He took the stand late Thursday afternoon. They were planning to play all of Vance's recorded statements, but only got to one before recessing until Friday morning.

Vance gave police four taped statements, three audio and one video. One of Vance's statements lasts more than four and a half hours. His story changed with each statement, including one in which he blamed two others for her rape and murder.

Kristen Edwards also took the stand Thursday. Police say Vance raped her in April of 2008. Police say they collected his DNA from her rape kit. Read more about Thursday's testimony in Vance's murder trial.

http://www.todaysthv.com/news/local/...=94029&catid=2

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Media Frenzy Over Curtis Vance Trial

The attack and murder of KATV anchor Anne Pressly made national news last year. Now, the trial of her alleged killer, Curtis Vance, is also garnering interest from around the country.

All of the local TV stations are covering the trial as well as three Memphis stations. Also, over the last few days we've seen national media like ABC, Fox, CBS, and MSNBC.

Reporters say the fact Pressly was a reporter and the murder was so brutal, makes this case high-profile.

A line of photographers scramble outside of the courtroom, sometimes to capture only a few seconds of video.

When court is on break, reporters like Shaun Chaiyabhat from WREG in Memphis are dictating their stories back to the newsroom.

"This is such a huge case and I think it captured the minds of a lot of folks in the mid-South," says Chaiyabhat.

"I'm doing live shots at five, six, and ten for the station in Memphis. Of course, I'm covering the trial as well as putting stories together," says Janice Broach, a reporter with WMC-TV in Memphis.

Terry Hailey is not a reporter or connected to any of the families. He just wants to sit in the trial.

"The whole experience is interesting, it's not like television and not like movies. The courtroom procedures are more informal," says Hailey.

The first day, family and supporters outnumbered the media, now, it's the other way around.

"There are several rows of media taking notes," says Chaiyabhat.

Memphis stations are also covering the trial because Pressly interned at WMC, she attended Rhodes college, and her on-air career just made it bigger.

"She was on air and people knew who she was. It makes a difference if you have a lot of pictures of somebody who has been murdered," says Broach.

Reporters say the courtroom is not full, unlike some of the other trials they've covered. The security in the courtroom, though, is very tight.

Reporters can only leave during scheduled breaks, but if they do leave, they can't go back in.

http://www.todaysthv.com/news/local/...Yxp14IapYJI%3D

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Hair on Pressly’s bed Vance’s, expert says

Other DNA called not as conclusive

LITTLE ROCK — A single tiny hair discovered on Little Rock TV news anchor Anne Pressly’s bed belongs to the man accused of killing her “within all scientific certainty,” a state DNA examiner testified Friday during the third day of testimony in Curtis Lavelle Vance’s capital-murder trial in Pulaski County Circuit Court. DNA evidence found on the back of her broken left hand also points to Vance, but is not as conclusive, another examiner said.

Prosecuting Attorney Larry Jegley is seeking the death penalty for the 29-year-old Marianna man who is also charged with rape, residential burglary and theft over Pressly’s October 2008 beating death at her Heights home. She died five days after her mother found her in bed unconscious, beaten and disfigured.

Vance’s defense attorneys have called into question police handling of evidence, suggesting that investigators overlooked other suspects and disregarded evidence that pointed to others. Defense attorneys also implied that Vance was incriminated through sloppy handling of DNA evidence.

Friday’s proceedings revolved around evidence processed by the Arkansas Crime Laboratory, but also marked the first time that authorities have detailed the exact DNA evidence against Vance and where it was found.

Police collected eight samples of hair from Pressly’s bedding and clothes, but only one hair had a root, making it suitable for DNA testing, said Lisa Channell, the lab’s chief criminologist.

The first of three Crime Lab witnesses to testify, Channell told the jury of six men and six women that she analyzed the hair evidence, results of a rape examination of Pressly and the bloodstained bedding as part of her duties as the agency’s top evidence examiner.

The hair, likely a pubic hair, was sent to the lab’s DNA examiners, Channell said.

Other hair samples found on the bedding and robe are “microscopically similar” to Vance’s, Channell said, describing how she compared evidence with known samples of Vance’s hair collected after his arrest.

“All of the characteristics I looked at - I found those same characteristics in the known sample,” said Channell, who testified for a little more than two hours.

But those findings are as conclusive as Channell can reach, she testified, saying they were confirmed by another analyst.

She told chief deputy prosecutor John Johnson that her examination couldn’t rule out that the shorter and darker hairs collected by investigators were Vance’s.

“I could not exclude Mr. Vance as the contributor,” she said.

Questioned by the defense, Channell acknowledged the hair-examination process can’t provide a definitive match like DNA can.

“Is there any way you can tell these jurors those are Curtis Vance’s hairs,” defense attorney Katherine Streett asked.

“No, I cannot,” Channell replied.

Chemical tests she ran on Pressly’s bedding and clothing indicated the presence of semen, she told jurors, but she didn’t run more conclusive tests after definitively finding semen on materials collected during Pressly’s rape exam. Channell said her findings suggested that Pressly had been sodomized by her attacker, but none of the tests found DNA.

Questioned by Streett, Channell said the positive tests on the fabric might also be from some other type of bodily fluid and that none of the testing conclusively linked the fluids to Vance.

Testimony that Vance’s DNA has been matched to the single hair came from the Crime Lab’s chief forensic DNA examiner, Melissa Myhand. She testified the match was “within all scientific certainty,” with the chances that the hair came from someone else are one in 1.5 quadrillion, which is about 220,588 times the population of the planet.

Asked about the possibility that her findings could be the results of contamination, Myhand replied, “In this case, absolutely not possible.”

Vance was incriminated in Pressly’s slaying by DNA collected from an April 2008 rape in Marianna, and Myhand testified she reviewedhow examiners handled evidence in that case to make sure Marianna evidence couldn’t have tainted the Pressly case. She said DNA extraction in the Marianna rape case wasn’t started until about a week after she finished her examination.

“[The Marianna evidence] had not even been brought out from our ... secured storage,” she testified during her 80 minutes on the witness stand.

Questioned by Streett about other DNA evidence, Myhand testified that DNA found on Pressly’s quilt was definitely not Vance’s. Nail scrapings collected from Pressly the day she died also turned up DNA that didn’t belong to Vance, a finding prosecutors shrugged off as possible contamination from a nurse or doctor who treated Pressly in the five days before her death.

Mary Robinette, a forensic DNA examiner who manages the Crime Lab’s DNA database, told jurors that specialized DNA testing that targets the male-exclusive Y chromosome showed that DNA collected from the back of Pressly’s broken left hand belonged either to Vance or someone in his male lineage.

“The DNA profiles match - not within all scientific certainty - but they do match,” she said.

The test is more sensitive than traditional DNA testing, which examines both the Y and X chromosomes, Robinette told jurors, but it is not as definitive since it detects only the Y chromosome. Robinette said the less conclusive testing could guarantee only that the evidence came from someone who shares the same male lineage as Vance.

“You have no idea who could be walking around with that DNA?” Streett asked.

“No, it’s not unique,” Robinette said.

Robinette’s testing also found DNA from at least three males on Pressly’s bedsheet and her underwear that don’t belong to Vance. She told Johnson, the prosecutor, that the Y-chromosome DNA is so easily transferred that those findings could reflect genetic material left behind by police and rescue workers who ministered to Pressly when she was found.

Presiding Judge Chris Piazza adjourned the proceedings about 2:30 p.m. on Friday, saying jurors had been through a lot with jury selection and hearing evidence.

Proceedings will resume at 9:30 a.m. Monday with testimony from Little Rock detectives J.C. White and Tommy Hudson about Vance’s November 2008 arrest. Prosecutors are expected to play two incriminating recorded statements from Vance for the Pulaski County jury on Monday, and they could wrap up their case by Tuesday.

Piazza reminded jurors of their oath not to discuss the case, suggesting they focus more on the prospects of the University of Arkansas Razorbacks over the weekend.

“We’ve all been through the ringer,” he said. “You’ve had a long week.”

This article was published today at 5:20 a.m.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 11/07/2009

[TJEddie]

Monday, November 09, 2009 - 10:35:15

Pressly murder trial continues UPDATED

The capital murder trial of Curtis Vance for the 2008 slaying of KATV anchor Anne Pressly continued this morning with testimony from Little Rock police detective J.C. White about a three-hour session with Vance after he was arrested Nov. 26.

The session wasn't recorded, but White testified to his recollection of the session, in which Vance gave a series of three evolving statements. The detective said Vance provided details that corresponded to evidence in the case.

Vance initially said he had nothing to do with the crime.

Then, in a second statement, he said he went to Pressly's home, but she wasn't there. He said he pried open a back door and stole a laptop. After being told his DNA had been found at the scene, he said that Pressly was there. He said he saw her lying naked in the bed with her dogs, but denied assaulting her.

In a third statement, Vance went further. He said he took a weapon, a wood-handled tool, into the house. He said he took a yellow purse and laptop outside to his car, then went back inside the house to take a credit card. He said he saw Pressly naked on the bed and took his penis out. The dogs began barking. That, he told the detective, awoke Pressly. She was startled and began fighting with him. He fought back. He said he feared she'd seen him. Vance later told White he'd thrown the tool into the Arkansas River as he drove to his brother's house in North Little Rock.

Vance said he left the house, drove to I-630 and then on to I-30, where he stopped at a Shell service station at Ninth Street, using Pressly's credit card to buy fuel. He said he backed up to leave the station because he didn't want to drive by a police car nearby. This was a detail that squared, the detective said, with a security camera video taken at the station.

Defense lawyer Katherine Streett asked why White didn't record the interview. White said he doesn't record statements initially because he doesn't want to have to start and stop tapes. He said Vance had also asked not to have the statement recorded.

Streett asked about inconsistencies in the statements, for example Vance saying he'd pried open the back door. No signs of forced entry were found. Also, Pressly, described as naked, was found with a T-shirt on. Vance also told White about throwing a purse in a neighbor's yard, but no purse was found, or anything else taken from the house.

Streett's questioning was aimed at showing that Vance could have known details about Pressly's house, car and injuries because of media reporting.

White said certain details were never mentioned to the press, including the missing laptop that Vance mentioned. But White acknowledged that police had provided some key details to Vance himself during the questioining, including the discovery of DNA evidence. It's a technique to let suspects know police know more than suspects might believe. He said, however, that Vance's description of a shed in the backyard of the house, the color of Pressly's car and the laptop were details not publicly known.

Later this morning, the jury will hear a tape-recorded statement Vance gave to police Dec. 10 after asking to meet with police while in the county jail.

UPDATE:

Before a break for lunch about 1:20 p.m., jurors heard an audio tape of Vance Dec. 10. It had been played in court previously, during a hearing on a defense effort to suppress his statements. In it, Vance claimed to have two accomplices the night of Pressly’s beating. They were seeking houses to burglarize for TVs and computers.

He said the three of them used socks from a pack of dirty clothes in his car as gloves. In this account, Vance took a stolen computer to his car, then encountered the two accomplices leaving the house saying, “we gotta go, we gotta go.” He learned later, he claimed, that one of the two had hit Pressly in the face with an iron pipe.

Detectives then asked how Vance's semen was found at the crime scene. He explained it came from using the sock for cleanup after he’d had oral sex some time previously with a prostitute.

During this statement, Vance claimed he was hit by an arresting officer in November. He also made a statement offering an alibi for the rape charge he faces in Marianna. He claimed the school teacher had been paying him to have sex and complained after he stopped. (She has said she couldn't identify her attacker.)

Police said one of the men identified as an accomplice by Vance was questioned by police, though not charged in the case. Defense lawyers brought out that a DNA sample taken from him wasn’t tested by the state Crime Lab.

A videotaped statement from Vance is expected after the lunch break. In it, Vance will exonerate his supposed accomplices.

Posted by Max Brantley on November 9, 2009 10:35 AM | Permalink

http://www.arktimes.com/blogs/arkans...1/post_31.aspx

[TJEddie]

Monday, November 09, 2009 - 19:25:50

Pressly Murder Trial -- Monday wrap-up

The capital murder trail of Curtis Vance in the slaying of KATV anchor Anne Pressly ran past 7 p.m. tonight as jurors were shown a sometimes rambling 4-hours-plus videotaped statement Vance provided police on February 24 of this year.

As seen on the tape: After asking to talk to detectives yet again, Vance initially told them that he'd been in MacArthur Park the night of the Pressly murder, and saw a white person -- he couldn't tell whether the person was male or female, he said -- get out of a blue or black car and dump Pressly's purse and laptop in a trash can. The purse, Vance said, contained $8,000 in cash. After getting Pressly's address off a credit card in the purse, Vance said, he drove by the scene, and saw police there.

Pressed again by LRPD detective J.C. White as to how his DNA ended up at the murder scene, Vance changed his story again, saying that he had entered Pressly's Club Road home with the intention of stealing electronics, but found "a bloodbath" in the bedroom, with Pressly already beaten by the time he came in.

Finally, after two breaks to go smoke and eating a fast food lunch as the interrogation room cameras rolled, Vance finally told detectives what he said was the whole truth. At times, Vance's voice was like that of a man speaking while half awake as he described how he went to Pressly's neighborhood so he could sleep in his car without fear of being robbed. Noticing his gas tank was almost empty, he said he began going into backyards, looking for gas cans in sheds.

While in the back yard of Pressly's home, Vance told detectives, he saw that her back door was "wide open." He admitted he went in, stole a gas card and laptop, then saw Pressly asleep in bed. After stealing a computer from the floor, he said he crawled on top of her.

"I put my weight against her weight," Vance said. Vance said he couldn't focus while trying to subdue Pressly and he didn't penetrate her, but he said he had touched her "inappropriately."

Asked repeatedly by J.C. White to explain why he started hitting Pressly with the "stick" Vance said he brought in from the back yard, Vance seemed reluctant. He described the attack and how it started only in the vaguest of terms: "I lose control, she lose control." Detectives asked if that meant she was trying to get away, and Vance said yes. At that moment, Vance said, he hit her four or five times with what he described as a square stick, two to two-and-a-half feet long, that he said looked like one of the legs from a chair or table. After leaving the house, Vance said, he threw Pressly's purse in the dumpster behind a carwash, disposed of the murder weapon in a nearby ditch, and sold her computer days later to a fence.

As the tape of Vance's final confession played, many of the jurors, who had been reading along in typed transcripts of the tape, looked intently at the screen prosecutors had wheeled in front of the jury box. One juror wheeled his chair close to the rail.

Near the end of the tape, Vance asked detectives if they could help him get a mental evaluation. He said there had to be something wrong with him. "There's gotta be something," Vance said. "I'm always on the edge. Always aggressive."

Testimony resumes at 9:30 a.m. tomorrow.

Posted by David Koon | Permalink | Comments [ 1 ]

http://www.arktimes.com/blogs/arkansasblog/

[lorettalockhorn]

Vance trial: jurors hear police interviews; detective testifies

LITTLE ROCK — Pulaski County jurors on Monday heard Curtis Lavelle Vance tell police several stories about his involvement in the beating death of Little Rock TV news anchor Anne Pressly before ultimately admitting to detectives that he’d attacked the 26-year-old in her home during an October 2008 break-in.

“I lost it,” Vance told police during 4 1/2-hour video interview played for the jurors who will decide on the capital-murder charge against him.

“This situation, I guess it got out of hand,” he said later after telling the detectives he’d committed a “sick crime.”

In addition to the Feb. 24 recording, a 2 1/2-hour audio recorded interview that police conducted with Vance on Dec. 10 was played for the six men and six women hearing evidence in Circuit Judge Chris Piazza’s court as Vance’s trial entered its second week on Monday.

Vance was arrested about a month after Pressly’s October 2008 beating death, linked to her killing by a hair found on the bed where she was found severely beaten and unconscious. He’s also charged with rape, residential burglary and theft, with Prosecuting Attorney Larry Jegley seeking the death penalty.

Vance, wearing a blue and white pinstriped shirt and khaki pants, appeared to listen intently to his own words on the recordings. He sometimes leaned forward and occasionally wrinkled his brow and exhaled loudly once. He took notes on a legal pad and periodically passed notes to his three public defenders or whispered to them.

The jurors read along from transcripts, their eyes occasionally flitting to the TV screen during the video interview. During a 12-minute break in the video-recorded questioning while Vance sat alone drinking a Coke and eating a McDonald’s hamburger and fries, several of the jurors watched intently.

The interviews, slightly edited at the judge’s order last month in response to defense challenges, consumed much of the day. On Monday prosecutors and defense sparred over how much Vance really knew about the attack on Pressly when he spoke with investigators.

Questioning Little Rock detective J.C. White, defense attorney Katherine Streett argued that Vance’s knowledge about the location of Pressly’s Heights neighborhood home, a description of her car, information about her injuries and how many dogs she owned could’ve come from news accounts. White acknowledged that some of the details described by Vance, like the fixtures in her home and the brand of her missing computer, were things Vance could’ve learned from the detectives who questioned him.

Streett also pointed out discrepancies in Vance’s statements: describing her stolen purse as alternately yellow and black, and his claim he could see into her home from the street despite police finding her blinds closed.

White, who interviewed Vance four times over the course of the investigation, testified that Vance adapted his stories as White challenged and discredited them. The detective told chief deputy prosecutor John Johnson that Vance had detailed knowledge of Pressly’s home and neighborhood and that Vance was able to describe the color of her couch and the layout of the property, at times admitting to details that only the killer would know. Police did tell Vance that Pressly had been beaten, White testified, but Vance knew that she’d been struck in the face.

Prosecutors began Monday’s proceedings with White on the stand detailing Vance’s three-hour interview with detectives just after his Nov. 26 arrest. Vance wouldn’t let the investigators record the meeting, White testified, alternating between his notes of the interview and memory. Vance gave police three accounts that night, White told the jury. Vance started out denying any role in the attack, but when officers told him his DNA had been found at the scene, he said he’d only broken into her home and stolen her laptop computer, the detective said.

Vance said his “M.O,” or modus operandi, was to break into houses and steal portable computers, White said. He said he’d stolen Pressly’s computer but claimed that the house was empty, White testified.

But when detectives confronted him about the DNA on her bed and her broken left hand, Vance said he’d discovered Pressly asleep in the nude during the burglary and that she’d awakened while he was standing over her pleasuring himself. Vance denied raping Pressly, but told the detectives that he’d beat Pressly with some kind of metal tipped tool that he got out of her backyard shed, White said. Vance was also concerned because Pressly had seen him, the detective said.

“He said she became startled and she looks at him,” White told jurors. “He said he took the object he’d carried from the storage shed and struck her in the head four or five times.”

Vance said he then fled the home with Pressly’s computer and a gas card. White said Vance described using the card at a Shell station on East Ninth Street before flinging the card onto the highway, then throwing the tool into the Arkansas River...

continued below

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...White returned to the witness stand two more times Monday to describe the circumstances of the December and February interviews. The detective told jurors that Vance on both occasions asked for him by name from jail with the promise of providing police more information.

In December, Vance told the detectives he wasn’t in Pressly’s home when she was attacked. He blamed the beating on one of two friends whom he said had broke into her home with him.

Describing how his DNA could’ve gotten onto Pressly, he told White that the real killer had borrowed a pair of his dirty socks to use as gloves during the burglary. He’d used one of the socks to clean himself after a sexual encounter with a prostitute, he told White, saying the socks must’ve also been carrying stray hair from his recent haircut. Detectives reject that claim as “physically impossible.”

Vance told the detectives he was telling the truth, saying he’d been urged to make up stories about the attack but had refused to do so. As an example, he told police, some fellow inmates had suggested he implicate star boxer Jermain Taylor, but Vance said he never met Taylor and doesn’t know him.

“I’m not like that,” Vance said. “I don’t know nothing about that.”

Vance started the February interview by denying he’d had any involvement in Pressly’s slaying, telling the detectives he’d seen someone abandon her bloody laptop and purse in MacArthur Park.

But White repeatedly challenged his accounts, until Vance admitted to attacking Pressly during a fit of rage after finding her asleep. He said he’d parked by her Club Road home to sleep but realized he was almost out of gas. He was foraging for fuel in the neighborhood, Vance said, when he came across Pressly’s unlocked back door. He estimated he was in her home for less than 30 minutes, saying he’d left before 11 p.m. He admitted to groping her but denied rape.

“I seen the victim laying there,” he told the detective. “I like forced her against her will to have sexual” contact.

White repeatedly disputed Vance’s claim that he didn’t rape her, but Vance was adamant that he didn’t.

“I put my weight against her weight,” he said. “I couldn’t focus on [rape] and try and restrain her.”

Pressed by the detective about why he beat her and what weapon he used, Vance continued to maintain he used a piece of lumber he found in her yard. He told the detective that Pressly didn’t seem afraid of him.

“I’m pretty sure she was, but she didn’t show it,” he said, telling the investigators that Pressly never screamed.

Vance told the detective he had been praying for Pressly’s family and his behavior puzzled even him. Near the end of the interview, White asked Vance why he didn’t just take Pressly’s belongings and leave her alone.

“That’s a good question,” Vance responds. “Somewhere down the line, I messed up.”

White will return to the witness stand when proceedings resume at 9:30 a.m. today to answer questions about the video interview. Prosecutors could wrap up their case against Vance today with testimony from the state medical examiner who performed her autopsy.

This article was published today at 4:19 a.m.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 11/10/2009

[lorettalockhorn]

Prosecution rests in Vance case

A medical examiner says an Arkansas TV anchorwoman was beaten so severely that one blow knocked a tooth out of her mouth and another shoved her jaw to the back of her head.

Dr. Stephen Erickson testified Tuesday in the capital murder trial of Curtis Lavelle Vance, who is charged with killing TV host Anne Pressly. He was the last witness before prosecutors rested their case.

Vance, of Marianna, has pleaded not guilty to murder, rape and burglary. If convicted, he could face the death penalty.

Defense lawyers questioned crime scene technicians about where they did — and did not — find blood, and asked Police Chief Stuart Thomas whether officers explored multiple theories. He said they had.

DNA specialists initially questioned by prosecutors were recalled to the stand to discuss genetic evidence gathered at the scene that didn’t have a match.

Vance’s legal team said it may call two additional witnesses Wednesday, then expects to rest. Pulaski County Circuit Judge Chris Piazza scheduled a court session Wednesday despite the rest of the courthouse being closed for Veterans Day, and jurors could begin deliberations by the end of the day.

Erickson said an examination of Pressly’s body after her death revealed that her face shattered “like an egg” during the attack. “I could feel crunchiness” while examining Pressly’s face, he said. A photo he used showed her nose pushed to one side.

Erickson said some type of object likely was used during the attack — the butt of a pistol or perhaps some type of club.

Pressly, the co-host of a morning TV show was hit so hard that a tooth — root intact — flew to her bedroom floor. Another blow crushed bones in the middle of her face. Another shoved her jaw backward, leaving her brain starved for blood.

Injuries like Pressly’s require a “high degree” of force — and end with a high degree of mortality, Erickson said.

Pressly, 26, was attacked early Oct. 20, 2008, at her home in Little Rock. Her mother, unable to reach Pressly by telephone, found her daughter shortly before she was due on KATV’s “Daybreak” program.

CT scans taken after the attack showed that her swollen brain gradually died. By Oct. 25, 2008, the day Pressly died, her brain was so swollen that no blood could enter.

The examiner also said Pressly’s left forearm had an abrasion, consistent with being held tightly, and that her left hand was swollen, blue and broken in five places.

Erickson said Pressly had injuries consistent with being raped. Defense lawyer Katherine Street, however, questioned whether they could have been caused by a medical examination. Erickson said it was possible, but said it appeared they were inflicted about the time of the attack.

On a tape played for jurors Monday, Vance told a police detective that he beat Pressly with a piece of wood that he found in her backyard — but never explained why. “I lose control, she lose control,” Vance said in the February interview.

Police witnesses said DNA evidence linked Vance to Pressly’s death and to a Marianna rape case in which he has pleaded not guilty.

The defense has said police duped Vance into confessing and giving officers a DNA sample to compare with evidence in the case.

Read tomorrow's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for full details.

Thank you for coming to the Web site of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. We're working to keep you informed with the latest breaking news.

This article was published today at 11:45 a.m.
Updated today at 5:35 p.m.

[lorettalockhorn]

Jury deliberation starts Wednesday in Vance trial

Curtis Vance Murder Trial: Jury Sent Home, Defense Plans To Rest

The defense started its case in part by following the trail of witnesses laid out by the state. Attorneys recalled a state Crime Lab specialist and Little Rock police, many of whom were called by the state days earlier. The defense questioned them about their handling of the case, the evidence and the testing of trace evidence.

While the jury was sent home late Tuesday afternoon, attorneys will remain in court until 6 p.m. They are discussing evidence that was ruled inadmissible at trial and entering it into the record in case of an appeal.

Judge Chris Piazza is asking attorneys to begin closing arguments Wednesday.

Extra security has been brought in because they want the added security when the verdict is delivered.

Prosecutors rested Friday after a medical examiner testified that Pressly died from blunt force trauma to her head. In great detail, Dr. Stephen Erickson said Tuesday that Pressly was the victim of a violent attack that likely included either a pistol-whipping or an attack with a club. He said that one blow knocked a tooth out of Pressly's mouth and that another shoved her jaw backward, cutting off blood flow to her brain.

Pressly's mother, Patty Cannady, was not in court during the testimony and has excused herself for most of Tuesday's testimony. When court recessed she did, however, break down in tears and was very emotional. Before Erickson began his testimony, the prosecutor asked Pressly's stepfather, Guy Cannady, if he would be all right and he nodded and said yes.

Morning testimony picked up where it left off Friday afternoon with testimony about Vance's four statements. Little Rock police lead Detective J.C. White said that Vance not only changed his story with each statement, but also changed his story four different times in his last four-hour video statement. Vance's lawyers said that police steered the interview back to their evidence when Vance's story was inconsistent with their evidence. White countered that they were getting him back on track when he would lie.

White gave the following examples:

He said his car overheated and she offered him water. However, White said there was no evidence of this or a water glass.
Vance said there were no dogs and there were two.
He said there was nothing but wine in the refrigerator and White said there was no wine at all.
White said of Vance's four statements, the fourth one had some semblance of the truth. He mentioned in the statement that there was a dog gate and White said there was a dog gate. at Pressly's home. He also mentioned that he was hungry and looking for food in her pantry and Pressly's pantry doors were open. Vance also knew that one of the bedrooms in her home had been converted to a walk-in closet.

Vance's attorneys also mentioned that Vance didn't know he was being videotaped and detectives misled him by starting and stopping the tape recorder. White said that they had plenty of notes to corroborate his statement regardless of whether or not it was being videotaped. Arkansas is a single party state, so legally only one party has to know they are being videotaped.

Vance has pleaded not guilty to capital murder and other charges. He could be sentenced to death if convicted.

http://www.todaysthv.com/news/local/...=94224&catid=2

[lorettalockhorn]

Defense May Conclude Wednesday in Vance Trial


Little Rock - Lawyers for Curtis Lavelle Vance at his capital murder trial say they expect to wrap up their side of the case sometime Wednesday.

Vance has pleaded not guilty to murder, rape and burglary charges in last year's beating death of KATV's Anne Pressly. Jurors could start deliberating the case sometime Wednesday.

Prosecutors rested Tuesday morning after the state's deputy medical examiner told jurors about Pressly's injuries. Defense lawyers asked crime scene technicians about what they didn't find at the scene, and also asked crime lab workers about DNA evidence gathered that didn't seem to have a match.

Pressly, 26, was raped and beaten in her Little Rock home late on Oct. 20, 2008, and died five days later.

Vance could face the death penalty if convicted.

http://www.katv.com/news/stories/1109/676870.html

[lorettalockhorn]

Update: Vance GUILTY on All Counts

The jury in the Curtis Vance capital murder trial has returned a verdict of GUILTY on all four counts, including capital murder, residential burglary, rape, and theft of property.

When the panel emerged from the jury room shortly after 3:00 p.m. to announce their decision, it was the second time they had done so.

At 1:45, they emerged from the jury room, and the judge and attorneys joined them in the courtroom.

They asked for two things, one, they wanted a written transcript of Vance's interviews and confession to police. Judge Chris Piazza told them the transcripts were not available, but they were free to consult the tapes that have been played in court.

Secondly, the jury asked for smaller versions of diagrams presented in court that explained DNA and described the layout of Pressly's home. Piazza told them the smaller diagrams were not available. They then returned to the jury room by 1:55.

After more than three hours of closing arguments, the case was given to the jury around 12:45.

Vance also faces rape and burglary charges in the attack on TV anchor Anne Pressly that led to her death five days later in October 2008.

Earlier today, Vance had something to say as he was led into court.

Vance's remarks centered on evidence in the case. He said, "I want the world to know that when they opened that evidence bag in court yesterday and there wasn't no hair in it, why was they talking about it at the state crime lab when it was supposed to been at that trial? That's what I'm talking about."

The prosecution and defense rested their cases yesterday after the jury heard testimony from a medical examiner describing the brutal beating that led to Pressly's death.

Earlier this week, a police detective told jurors that Vance confessed to being at Pressly's home the night she was murdered. The jury also heard recordings during the trial in which the 29-year-old Vance apparently confessed to beating Pressly with a piece of wood.

Vance could face life in prison or the death penalty if convicted.

http://arkansasmatters.com/content/fulltext/?cid=270141

[lorettalockhorn]

Guilty verdict reached in Vance trial

A jury finds Curtis Vance, 29, guilty of capital murder in the death of anchorwoman Anne Pressly. The jury of six men and six women deliberated for just under two and a half hours after closing arguments Wednesday morning. The jury also found him guilty of rape, residential burglary and theft of property connected to the October 2008 attack.

Vance faces either life in prison or the death penalty. The jury will begin the sentencing phase of the trial later today. Prosecutors will put on new witnesses and evidence to try and prove at least one aggravator exists in the crime that will make Vance eligible to be sentenced to death. His defense team will then put on witnesses and mitigating evidence on why Vance's life should be spared.

Prosecutors used a combination of DNA evidence and confessions from Vance to prove beyond a reasonable doubt he alone was responsible for Pressly's murder.

http://www.fox16.com/news/local/stor...0eUF4542g.cspx

[lorettalockhorn]

Curtis Vance Guilty On All Four Counts, Sentencing Phase Under Way


Curtis Vance has been found guilty on all four counts. He was charged with capital murder, rape, residential theft and burglary in the brutal murder and rape of KATV anchorwoman Anne Pressly.

The jury came back with the guilty verdict after deliberating about 2 1/2 hours. Judge Chris Piazza told jurors before they went into deliberations that "now is the time it gets tense."

The sentencing phase began quickly after the verdict was read at about 3:10 p.m. Sentencing began at 3:45 p.m. Judge Chris Piazza said that the state and defense will both call witnesses and testimony could continue into Thursday. Vance faces the death penalty.

THV's Ebone Monet said there was no visible reaction from Vance or Pressly's family and friends when the verdict was read. However, Piazza had requested that people in the courtroom refrain from displaying their emotions. Extra security was brought in as a precaution but there were no outbursts.

Prosecutor John Johnson gave the state's closing. Monet says he was slow and deliberate and briefly summarized their evidence. He described Vance as a scavenger and predator. He pointed to Vance and said, "This is the person who makes the dogs bark at night."

Johnson said Vance was a predator on the night Pressly was killed and that the Marianna man attacked the woman after she had fallen asleep in bed while working on her laptop computer.

However, defense lawyer Teri Chambers said in her closing that there were too many holes in the state's case. She said tests on some hair found at Pressly's home were not precise enough. She also repeated claims that police fed Vance information about the case so he would give it back in a confession.

Nearly 100 people were in Piazza's courtroom, including many from KATV. One front row was lined with Little Rock police officers who testified, including the police chief. The other with Pressly's family. However, Pressly's mother, Patty Cannady, and Vance's mother, Jacqueline Burnett, were not in the courtroom for most of Wednesday. They were there for the verdict.

Pressly was severely beaten Oct. 20, 2008, and died five days later.

http://www.todaysthv.com/news/local/...4278&catid=238

[lorettalockhorn]

Vance found guilty of all counts

Jurors must now decide Pressly killer’s sentence

LITTLE ROCK — A Pulaski County jury deliberated 2 1/2 hours Wednesday before finding Curtis Lavelle Vance guilty of capital murder for fatally beating Little Rock TV news anchor Anne Pressly during an October 2008 break-in at her Little Rock home.

The jury of six men and six women could decide today whether the 29-year-old Marianna man should die for beating the 26-year-old KATV, Channel 7, reporter, an attack that prosecutors say was so brutal that he deserves to be executed for it. She died five days after her mother found her on Oct. 20.

A death-penalty recommendation requires a unanimous jury decision; anything less will result in a sentence of life without the possibility of parole.

Prosecutors urged jurors to carefully weigh the evidence favoring execution as the sentencing hearing began Wednesday afternoon. Proceedings resume with defense testimony at 9:30 a.m. today.

“It’s hard, hard work you’ve done, and now there’s more,” chief deputy prosecutor John Johnson told the jurors. “Just because something’s hard doesn’t mean it’s wrong. Use common sense to consider what he’s done to Anne Pressly, how he did it and why he did it. The conclusion is that Curtis Vance has forfeited his right to walk among us.”

But defense attorney Katherine Streett asked jurors to listen to witnesses who will testify about Vance’s life of abuse and deprivation. Streett said the defense will provide jurors with a lot of information about his childhood and warned that the display could grow tedious, but she asked them to pay close attention.

“These things should matter ... in your decision as to whether he lives or dies,” she said.

The jurors found Vance guilty on all charges: capital murder, rape, residential burglary and theft.

After the verdict was read, Pressly’s family and supporters waited until jurors were dismissed for a break before they broke into tears and hugs. Pressly’s mother, Patti Cannady, hadn’t been allowed to attend the proceedings until Wednesday’s closing arguments because she was a witness in the case. Her husband, Guy Cannady, waived his right to testify so he could watch his wife testify.

Vance appeared calm as Circuit Judge Chris Piazza read the guilty verdict. Vance rubbed his temple with his left hand then rested his head in his hands. As he boarded a van later for the trip back to jail, he was defiant.

“It’s a corrupt system,” he shouted as his family engaged in a shouting contest with reporters yelling questions at Vance.

“We love you, Lavelle,” his mother, Jacqueline Vance Burnett, called to him.

Wednesday’s verdict followed five days of gruesome testimony about Pressly’s injuries, first from her mother who described trying to stanch a bleeding wound that left her daughter whimpering.

The nurse who performed a rape exam on Pressly testified last week that during the examination she couldn’t tell that Pressly was a woman.

“Her jaw was over to the side. It [her face] was not symmetrical,” said Carla Jackson, who said Pressly entered the hospital bleeding from the sides of her head.

“My first thought was I couldn’t believe this person was alive,” Jackson testified, saying there was so much blood it could have obscured other injuries.

On the same day that Jackson testified, the emergency room doctor, Dr. Theresa McBride, told jurors that Pressly’s face was “not recognizable as human.” When the stricken TV reporter was admitted, Pressly’s “nose was so badly crushed it didn’t look like a nose,” and her jaw was so far dislocated that it appeared to be part of her neck, said McBride, who testified that she spent 2 1/2 hours treating and stabilizing Pressly.

In testimony Tuesday, Dr. Stephen Erickson, the state’s deputy chief medical examiner, said Pressly was struck at least a dozen times, several times in the face, with each blow splitting her skin. He said she suffered five skull fractures.

The blow to her jaw alone could’ve killed her, Erickson testified, saying that it was so hard that it fractured her skull and impeded the brain’s oxygen supply. The doctor compared some of her injuries to a broken eggshell, saying that her face was so badly broken that it had come loose from her cranium and crunched at times as he examined it.

In his closing argument Wednesday morning, Johnson told jurors that Pressly slept in her home not knowing that a “scavenger” lurked outside her place of safety.

“There was someone out there,” Johnson said. “That person is the one who makes the dogs bark. He’s the one who rustles the chain-link fence. He’s Curtis Vance, and Curtis Vance was out there looking for what he could take. He broke into Anne Pressly’s [home], and he took from her everything.”

He asked jurors to imagine Pressly’s terror at waking up to the groping touch of a stranger.

“Can you see him standing over her? Can you imagine what he said to her?” Johnson said. “She feels ... that paralyzing fear we’ve all had, we can’t run, we can’t move, we can’t even scream.”

Pressly found the will to fight, Johnson said, and Vance bludgeoned her to death for it.

“He’s getting out of control, and he’s hitting her, swinging for the fences,” Johnson said, as in one hand he held a photo of a smiling Pressly in a pink blouse and in the other an autopsy photo of her battered face and crushed nose. “He kept hitting her until he made this person look like this. He beat her beyond all recognition because she wouldn’t do what he wanted.”

Defense attorney Teri Chambers told jurors that DNA evidence that placed Vance in Pressly’s bedroom and Vance’s own confession that he beat and molested the woman wouldn’t hold up if they looked at it closely. Chambers acknowledged that the evidence seemed damning.

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“I’m not going to stand up here and insult your intelligence and say, there’s no way you couldn’t connect Curtis Vance to this crime,” she said, calling Pressly’s death a tragedy and loss. “I know at first blush, you’re saying how can it be that Curtis Vance didn’t commit these crimes - you’ve got DNA and you’ve got a confession?”

But authorities were seeking a capital-murder conviction on the strength of a single hair, she said, backed with less-conclusive DNA evidence that can’t definitively identify Vance as the killer. And jurors couldn’t believe what Vance told police, Chambers said.

“I cannot keep up with the stories he’s told police,” she said. “But one thing abundantly clear is you can’t base anything on what comes out of his mouth. I don’t know how you decide what to believe or not to believe.”

Authorities had decided that Vance was the killer and didn’t bother to follow evidence elsewhere, even willfully overlooking the involvement of others, she said.

“The police and prosecutors decided a long time ago that Curtis committed this crime alone,” she said. “The state’s position is if the evidence connects Curtis to the crime, it’s reliable. But if it doesn’t or it connects to someone else, it doesn’t matter. I can’t tell you who it was, but the evidence indicates the presence of more than one person. This case has been closed, and it will not be investigated further if you convict Curtis of capital murder.”...

continued below

[lorettalockhorn]

...Piazza began the penalty phase of the trial following a short break after the verdict was read.

Prosecutors presented five reasons, called aggravated circumstances, for jurors to justify a death sentence. Those circumstances include Vance’s past use of violence and that Pressly’s death was so horrific that it demands the ultimate sanction. Jurors must believe only one to call for the death penalty.

In the punishment phase of the trial, prosecutors called only four witnesses, opening with Kristen Edwards, the 33-year-old educator whose April 2008 rape produced DNA evidence that eventually linked Vance to Pressly’s slaying. Vance is charged with rape in Lee County over Edwards’ attack but has not faced trial yet on that charge. Edwards has never been able to identify him as her attacker, but he has been charged based on DNA evidence found from her rape exam. She was sodomized because she was overpowered, she testified.

“I just spent the whole time thinking I was about to die. I don’t know how to explain how [difficult] it was, someone violent against me, someone in my home doing those things,” she told jurors. “He was so much bigger than me. I didn’t have a choice. I didn’t have an option but to do what I had to do.”

Prosecutors ended their part of the punishment hearing with testimony from Cannady, who described last week finding her daughter disfigured in her bloody bed. On Wednesday, she described her anguish at losing her only child.

“She was such a great joy,” she told the jurors, her voice ragged with grief. “All I’m trying to do is stay strong enough to get to the other side of the cross and see Anne again.”

Cannady said she was so grief-stricken that she destroyed family heirlooms because she has no descendants to inherit them. Her daughter was Christ-loving but “salty and full of sass,” she said.

She read from a Mother’s Day letter that Pressly wrote her at age 5. She chuckled at the childish spelling but choked up on her daughter’s promise of eternal love. “‘My mother is a wonderful and she helps me when I’m sick,’” Cannady recited from the card. “‘She will love me as long as I live and I will love her too.’”

Defense attorneys, hoping to contrast Pressly’s childhood with that of their client’s, questioned Cannady about how much she supported her daughter.

“You were always there to support her ... mentally, always there to support her emotionally, always there to support her spiritually,” Chambers asked.

“I was,” Cannady said. “I only wish it had been me, not her.”

Prosecutors had one final question for Cannady.

“How would you feel if your words were used to help this man,” Johnson asked, gesturing toward Vance.

“It would make me feel horrible,” Cannady replied.

This article was published today at 5:35 a.m.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 11/12/2009

[lorettalockhorn]

Vance jury deciding killer's punishment

A jury that convicted a man of capital murder in the beating death of an Arkansas TV anchorwoman was weighing Thursday what his punishment would be.

Jurors found Curtis Lavelle Vance guilty Wednesday in an assault on KATV host Anne Pressly at her Little Rock bungalow on Oct. 20, 2008. The attack shattered her face and sent her into a coma. Pressly never regained consciousness and died five days later.

Vance, 29, of Marianna, also was convicted of residential burglary along with rape and theft of property.

Jurors deciding on his penalty could also sentence him to life in prison without the possibility of parole. If the jury cannot settle on a penalty, Pulaski County Circuit Judge Chris Piazza must impose the life sentence.

Prosecution witnesses said DNA evidence linked Vance to Pressly’s death and to a separate rape case in which he has pleaded not guilty. The defense has said police duped Vance into confessing and giving officers a DNA sample to compare with evidence in the case.

This article was published today at 10:20 a.m.

[lorettalockhorn]

'Tweeting’ reporter ejected

LITTLE ROCK — A Memphis TV reporter was ejected from the Pulaski County Courthouse near the conclusion of the Curtis Vance capital-murder trial Wednesday after Circuit Judge Chris Piazza learned she’d been filing Internet updates in violation of his order against any broadcasting from the courtroom.

Piazza banned cameras from the proceedings a month ago at the request of the defense and specifically barred using the Twitter blogging service.

But Piazza surprised court watchers Wednesday by calling Jill Monier, a reporter for WHBQ-TV, before him during a break during closing arguments.

He told Monier that his law clerk had been monitoring the Internet and shown him that Monier had been posting Twitter updates,known as “tweets,” right from the courtroom. Piazza said his first inclination was to jail her for contempt, but that alack of staffing on Veterans Day kept him from having her locked up. Instead, he ordered her out and wished her well.

“I’m going to banish you from the courthouse,” he said.

Monier left the premises, with bailiffs and deputies searching the courthouse to make sure that she was gone.

This article was published today at 5:33 a.m.
Front Section, Pages 6 on 11/12/2009

[lorettalockhorn]

Jury begins sentencing deliberations

The jury is ready to decide whether Curtis Vance will live or die for killing anchorwoman Anne Pressly.

Jurors have listened to nearly a full day worth of defense testimony trying to spare Vance's life

The defense team called 15 witness in all including family, friends and two doctors.

Stay with FOX16 to find out what the jury will decide.


LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) - The mother of the man convicted of killing a TV anchorwoman told jurors considering whether to impose the death penalty that she was an abusive mother who had a number of crack-fueled run-ins with the law.

Jacqueline Vance Burnett, 46, said she deliberately became pregnant as a teenager so she would be kicked out of her all-girls high school in Chicago, then took solace in crack cocaine after her husband became unfaithful and her sister moved into her home. "When she let the smoke out of her mouth, she didn't have a problem in the world and I wanted that feeling," Burnett said.

Her son, Curtis Lavelle Vance, 29, was convicted Wednesday of capital murder, rape, burglary and theft of property in the death of KATV personality Anne Pressly after a brutal attack Oct. 20, 2008. The 26-year-old Pressly was an anchor on the "Daybreak"
program and had a bit part in the President Bush biopic "W." She died five days after the attack without regaining consciousness.

The jury is expected to begin deliberating late Thursday whether Vance should be executed or spend the rest of his life in prison.

Burnett said she worked as a prostitute to earn money for drugs and snapped after a "date" fell through. She said Vance had been left in charge of a younger brother and that, when she returned, the brother was smearing feces on a wall. Burnett said she threw Vance into a brick wall several times until he nearly passed out, then took him to a hospital and told him to never tell anyone what happened. "He ain't told nobody yet," she said.

Burnett told child services workers that Vance fell from a bunk bed. A home visit from a social worker revealed nothing out of order, Burnett said. "When I was on crack I kept a nice, clean house," she said.

Burnett also told jurors that she would buy drugs with money her children received from Social Security after their fathers died and that she had spent time in prison for burglary, forgery and theft.

Her mother watched the children while she was incarcerated, she said. Vance's mother said she has since gone through rehab.

Vance appeared uncomfortable during much of his mother's testimony, fidgeting, interlacing his fingers and putting his head between his elbows as he rested them on a table. She apologized to him from the witness stand for throwing him against the wall. He mumbled something, then said "I love you, momma." Defense lawyer Katherine Street patted his right forearm in a subtle request to have him stay silent.

In separate testimony, a paralegal who compiled documents regarding Vance and Burnett's life read school and court records, revealing that Burnett had been placed in the all-girls school after stabbing another child in the eye with a pencil in sixth
grade.

At a break in the trial, Burnett and other relatives gathered with Vance, hugging him over the courtroom rail.

Earlier Thursday, a psychiatrist told jurors Vance showed signs of paranoia and compared the man's brain to a car with bad wiring. "Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't," Dr. Shawn Agharkar testified.

Agharkar, who teaches at Morehouse and Emory universities, said Vance initially didn't want to meet with him even though the psychiatrist's testimony could help spare his life. The doctor said Vance felt the entire community was against him and that the Marianna man had difficulty weighing options.

On cross-examination, deputy prosecutor John Johnson asked whether it was possible that Vance was not paranoid - because after Pressly's high-profile killing people really were against Vance.

"Even paranoid people have enemies," Agharkar acknowledged.

http://www.fox16.com/news/local/stor...MzVEdsJxw.cspx

[lorettalockhorn]

Death Penalty Weighed in Murder of TV Anchor

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — A jury that convicted a man of capital murder in the beating death of an Arkansas TV anchorwoman will weigh Thursday whether to impose the death penalty.

Jurors found Curtis Lavelle Vance guilty Wednesday in an assault on KATV host Anne Pressly at her Little Rock bungalow on Oct. 20, 2008. The attack shattered her face and sent her into a coma. Pressly never regained consciousness and died five days later.

Vance, 29, of Marianna, also was convicted of residential burglary along with rape and theft of property.

Jurors deciding on his penalty could also sentence him to life in prison without the possibility of parole. If the jury cannot settle on a penalty, Pulaski County Circuit Judge Chris Piazza must impose the life sentence.

Prosecution witnesses said DNA evidence linked Vance to Pressly's death and to a separate rape case in which he has pleaded not guilty. The defense has said police duped Vance into confessing and giving officers a DNA sample to compare with evidence in the case.

During the penalty phase that began Wednesday, Pressly's mother, Patti Cannady, said that after the death of her only child she ripped up many family photos because she didn't have anyone to give them to.

"Oh, Lord Jesus, how I wish it were me and not Anne," Cannady said.

A lawyer for the state Department of Human Services read from agency documents that revealed a troubled youth for Vance. One of Vance's aunts also testified that Vance's mother had been addicted to crack and lived for a time in a Memphis, Tenn., homeless shelter after asking her mother to raise her children.

As Vance left the courthouse, family members shouted "Love ya, Lavelle!" and he said "Love you!"

Then he shouted, "It's a corrupted system!"

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,...e=fnc/us/crime

[TJEddie]

It's life without parole.

http://www.arktimes.com/blogs/arkans..._vance_pe.aspx

[samanthajane13]

Jury chooses life sentence in TV anchor killing
By CHUCK BARTELS, Associated Press Writer Chuck Bartels, Associated Press Writer – 54 mins ago

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – A jury sentenced a man to life in prison Thursday for the beating death of a popular Arkansas television personality, sparing him the death penalty after hearing testimony about his rocky upbringing by an abusive, drug-addicted mother.

Jurors deliberated less than three hours before recommending that Curtis Lavelle Vance, 29, be sentenced to life in prison without parole for the death of Anne Pressly. They also handed down a life sentence for rape, 20 years for burglary and 10 years for theft.

Pressly, 26, was an anchor on KATV's "Daybreak" program and had a bit part in the President George W. Bush biopic "W." She died Oct. 25, 2008, five days after a brutal assault that crushed her face and left her gasping for air.

Vance's mother testified Thursday that she was abusive, and a doctor said Vance showed signs of paranoia. Pressly's mother, Patti Cannady, told jurors Wednesday what it was like to lose an only child.

After the verdict was read, Cannady mouthed "It's OK" to prosecutor Larry Jegley, nodded, and tucked her hands over her heart. But as she left the courtroom, Cannady stopped and turned at the door. She leaned toward the defense attorneys and said, "You protected someone who should have never been protected."

Vance, who had appeared uncomfortable during much of his mother's testimony, showed no emotion as the sentence was read.

Jacqueline Vance Burnett had told jurors she was an abusive mother who had a number of crack-fueled run-ins with the law.

Burnett said she worked as a prostitute to earn money for drugs and once snapped after a "date" fell through. She said Vance had been left in charge of a younger brother and that when she returned, the brother was smearing feces on a wall. Burnett said she threw Vance into a brick wall several times until he nearly passed out.

She also told jurors she would buy drugs with money her children received from Social Security after their fathers died and that she had spent time in prison for burglary, forgery and theft.

Burnett said she has since gone through rehab and she apologized to Vance from the witness stand for throwing him against the wall. He mumbled something, then said "I love you, momma."

During closing arguments, prosecutor Larry Jegley called Vance's upbringing "an American tragedy," but he noted that siblings and other family members have led successful lives and said Vance's situation was a result of his own choices.

"Do I like it? No," Jegley said after the sentence was read. "But they can consider all of them. That's the law."

Defense lawyer Katherine Streett had urged jurors — who had convicted Vance a day earlier of capital murder, rape, burglary and theft of property — to have the "courage" to not impose the death penalty.

"The decision you're about to make may speak as much about you as it does about Curtis Vance," Streett said. If mitigation in this case ... has any meaning to you in a significant way, you do not have to kill him," Streett said.

Vance's attorneys did not comment after the sentence.

Another brother, B.J. Montgomery of Little Rock, testified that Vance played with him, made sure he did his homework and protected him from their mother. At times Vance would cook for the rest of the family, Montgomery said. "That's my brother, and I love him," he said.

Vance's girlfriend, Sheanika Cooper, said he often spoiled their three children, two girls and a boy.

A psychiatrist had told jurors Vance showed signs of paranoia and compared the man's brain to a car with bad wiring.

"Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't," said Dr. Shawn Agharkar, who teaches at Morehouse and Emory universities.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091113/...nchor_attacked

[lorettalockhorn]

Vance gets life without parole

Jury rejects death penalty sought by prosecutors

LITTLE ROCK — A Pulaski County jury deliberated less than three hours Thursday before deciding that Curtis Lavelle Vance should spend the rest of his life in prison for raping and killing Little Rock TV news anchor Anne Pressly in a brutal attack more than a year ago.

A day after convicting the 29-year-old Marianna man of capital murder, rape, burglary and theft of property in the October 2008 attack, the six-man, six-woman jury rejected the death penalty sought by prosecutors. Under Arkansas law, an appeal to the state Supreme Court is automatic.

“There really aren’t any winners tonight,” Pressly’s stepfather, Guy Cannady, said after the sentence was handed down. “Not until he gets carried out of Tucker Max in a pine box will he meet his true judgment.”

Pressly was found by her mother, Patti Cannady, in the pre-dawn hours of Oct. 20, 2008, unconscious with her face shattered beyond recognition. The 26-year-old morning anchor for KATV, Channel 7, never woke up from the attack and died five days later.

Vance was arrested a month after Pressly’s slaying, after DNA from the crime scene matched DNA evidence from a rape in Marianna in which he was a suspect. He would go on to alternately confess and deny the fatal attack on Pressly in interviews with police.

Thursday, as Circuit Judge Chris Piazza announced the jury’s recommendation of life in prison for capital murder, Cannady was in the front row of the courtroom, wearing a pink jacket, her daughter’s favorite color. She’d been barred from attending almost all of the proceedings, since she was a witness in the case. Holding hands with Kristen Edwards, the former Marianna schoolteacher in whose rape seven months before Pressly’s slaying Vance is charged, Cannady was composed and mouthed the words, ‘It’s all right,’ toward prosecutors.

But once jurors were dismissed, Cannady teared up and rebuked Vance’s defenders in a tearful whisper.

“He murdered my daughter,” she said. “You protected someone who should never have been protected.”

At a news conference across the street from the courthouse 15 minutes after sentencing, she joined her husband, police detectives, prosecutors and family and friends, holding hands with Prosecuting Attorney Larry Jegley and her husband, who spoke for her.

Guy Cannady thanked everyone who helped with the case, “hundreds of people who put in tens of thousands of hours.”

He said Vance’s public defenders ultimately couldn’t keep their client from being held responsible.

“When they provided their evidence, when they provided their facts, they came up lacking,” he said.

Life is a fair sentence for Vance, Guy Cannady said. Living out his days in a 6-by-9-foot cell would give Vance ample opportunity to reflect on his crimes, he said.

In addition to the life sentence without parole for Pressly’s murder, jurors recommended life on the rape charge, 20 years with a $15,000 fine for the residential burglary and 10 years with a $10,000 fine for theft. Piazza ordered the sentences to be served consecutively.

Jegley called the jury’s decision “a good strong verdict” that led to a punishment that was the maximum possible short of death.

“I always respect what 12 members of the community decide,” he said.

After the verdict was announced, Pulaski County sheriff's deputies escorted the 12 jurors and two alternates briskly from the courthouse, and they scattered immediately. Those asked for comment declined and kept walking.

Jurors had to read and fill out 35 pages to document their sentencing decision, and the records show they rejected two of the prosecutor’s four reasons that Vance deserved execution: that Pressly was killed in a crime of financial gain and that Vance killed her to keep from getting caught.Jurors did agree with Jegley’s arguments that Vance had committed a violent felony in raping Edwards and that Pressly’s murder was committed in “an especially cruel manner.”

Jurors had to believe only one of those “aggravated circumstances” to call for the death penalty, but they ultimately gave the greater weight to the defense, who offered 50 mitigating circumstances to consider for a life sentence. The death penalty required a unanimous verdict, otherwise the capital-murder sentence was automatic life.

Vance, who didn’t testify at trial, didn’t take the stand during the two-day sentencing hearing. But the defense team called 15 witnesses including his mother, Jacqueline Burnett. She took the stand to tell jurors that she’d been a drug-addicted sometimes-prostitute who had beat her son unconscious when he was 6 years old, an attack defense experts said had likely left Vance brain-damaged. Burnett told jurors she’d taken her three sons’ Social Security benefits to buy crack, and described how she abandoned her youngest daughter to be raised by a Memphis pastor.

She declined comment after the trial, but called out, “We love you, Lavelle.”

Vance’s girlfriend, brother and sister testified, describing him as a protective older brother and perfect, loving father.

Jurors rejected outright defense claims that Vance got no emotional or financial support from his mother and arguments that his brain doesn’t function normally. But they did find that 35 of the defense’s mitigating circumstances existed, including that Burnett, 46, had been violent toward her son and abandoned him for long stretches of time while she was using drugs. Jurors also found that Vance had been a loving father, a supportive, protective and encouraging older brother who has tried to provide for his children.

Jegley told jurors in his closing arguments before the sentencing that Vance killed Pressly to cover his tracks.

“Remember ... she tried to shield herself - he knew she could identify him so he killed her,” he said.

The “cruel” death warranted the ultimate punishment, Jegley said, saying the attack amounted to torture.

“In the sanctity of her home, the comfort and security of her bed, Anne Pressly awoke to savagery,” he said. “She tried - in his words - to defend herself by “wiggling away” from him. As he put ‘his weight on her weight’ - his words - she didn't know what her fate would be.”

Jegley reminded jurors of the autopsy photographs of Pressly they'd seen and the medical testimony about her broken bones.

“You heard how this man destroyed a woman's face,” he said.

In her closing argument, defense attorney Katherine Streett told jurors she couldn't challenge the circumstances of Pressly’s death or the Marianna rape allegations. But she said prosecutors had shown them no proof that her client killed Pressly while burglarizing her home or that he fatally beat her to avoid arrest. Jurors could punish Vance without killing him, she said. Execution would not balance the loss of Pressly’s life, she said.

“Patti Cannady said from the witness stand that her daughter’s life counts, and it does. She should not have died. No one has the right to murder,” Streett told jurors. “But the question for you is, what do you do about it? You can’t fix it. The only way to fix it is to bring her daughter back to life. The law doesn't require that you fix it. If putting Curtis Vance to death would bring Anne Pressly back, who could tell you not to?”...

continued below

[lorettalockhorn]

...The jurors’ duty is to figure out how to punish Vance, Streett said.

“How can you do that? You can kill him,” she said. “Do you have to put him to death to punish him?”

Jurors should consider the circumstances of his life not as an excuse for what he's done, but as a reason “for how we got here, where this [crime] came from.” Vance “was a tragedy waiting to happen,” she said. One that might have been prevented if he'd been raised by a mother who cared about her son half as much as Cannady cared about her daughter, Streett told jurors. She asked jurors to reject outside pressure.

“I think we all know what the community expects. There are some people who think this is a foregone conclusion. But it takes courage to ... do the hard thing and this is a time for courage,” she said. “The decision you’re about to make may speak as much about you as it does about Anne Pressly.”

In his rebuttal, Jegley also urged jurors to embrace courage and reject any pressure to make a decision not based in the law and evidence. But he urged them not to pity Vance, whose life was “an American tragedy,” but to see him as a man who made his own choices. Vance’s younger brother overcame similar circumstances, the prosecutor said.

“You heard Curtis Vance,” Jegley said. “He made choices over and over and over. He made the choice to be a burglar and thief - to feed off the hard work and efforts of others. He chose it because it was what he wanted to do.”

Jurors could see the kind of man Vance is by the choice he made in attacking Pressly, the prosecutor said. Vance told police he’d stolen her laptop and her purse then left her house. Vance could’ve left Pressly alone, Jegley said.

“Curtis Vance chose to be a scavenger and prowl the dark alleys. He didn’t have to choose to become a predator. He became one when he attacked and killed Anne Pressly,” the prosecutor told jurors. “He ... could’ve chosen to disappear back into the darkness. He chose to be the predator and that’s why we’re here. Curtis Vance had the opportunity to leave but he didn’t. He chose to pickup a weapon. He made the choice and he should be accountable.”

Jegley also encouraged jurors not to spare Vance out of sympathy for the defendant’s family, saying they are also the victim of his bad choices.

Their tears are the result of his choices and his disregard for them,” he said. “It is because of him there was so much damage and he should pay ... for his terribly sick crime.”

Vance still has to stand trial in the April 2008 attack on Edwards. Charged with rape, aggravated robbery and theft, he faces the possibility of two more life sentences.

Information for this report was contributed by Jacob Quinn Sanders of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

This article was published today at 5:58 a.m.

[lorettalockhorn]

Tortured defense

LITTLE ROCK — Just before the trial began for Curtis Lavelle Vance, who earlier this week was convicted of murdering television anchorwoman Anne Pressly, Judge Chris Piazza granted a defense motion to bar testimony about how much pain she might have suffered.

Any statement about the pain associated with Pressly’s injuries or her suffering would be a guess, defense attorney Katherine Street argued. Descriptions of what people saw were acceptable to the defense, she said, “but not to the level of pain.”

I couldn’t help but shake my head. Descriptions about the level of pain have become the centerpiece of challenges to capital punishment by Death Row inmates.

In Washington, a trio brought suit in May of this year contesting the lethal injection “cocktail” mix used to execute prisoners. The primary argument put forth by the three condemned inmates? They claimed there was a chance they might suffer-guess what-too much pain during their executions.

“This case is about suffocation and searing pain,” one defense attorney said.

His client, Jonathan Gentry, was a lot less concerned about pain when he caved a 12-year-old girl’s skull in with a rock back in 1988.

Like so many violent criminal plaintiffs appealing their sentences, Gentry’s perspective on the subject has undergone a transformation during his years behind bars. He’s fervently against pain now.

Another defense attorney in the Washington case warned of the risk of “excruciating pain” if the first sedative dose of the lethal injection didn’t render an inmate totally unconscious.

Superlative descriptions of pain levels such as “tremendous” and “severe” run rampant in the case. The presiding judge did not disallow guesswork about pain and suffering;that was the crux of the case.

Ultimately, the Thurston County Superior Court in Washington denied the three murderers’ claims, relying substantially on the April 2008 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Baze and Bowling vs. Rees. In that case , the court ruled that Kentucky’s lethal injection protocol was constitutional as a form of capital punishment.

Kentucky is one of 30 states that all use the same three-drug formula in lethal injections. Luckily for convicted murderers, the execution is said to be painless when conducted properly.

Once they were facing the needle, the Baze plaintiffs, both convicted of double homicides, saw pain in a different light. Appealing to the SupremeCourt, they contended that an improper administration of the lethal injection could result in “significant pain.”

In oral argument, plaintiff attorney Donald Verilli wasted no time in bringing the terminology of torment to bear on howmuch agony an inmate might suffer.

“Kentucky’s lethal injection procedures pose a danger of cruelly inhumane executions,” he said in his opening sentence. “If the first drug in the three-drug sequence . . . is not effectively administered to the executed inmate . . . the third drug, potassium chloride, will inflict an excruciating burning pain as it courses through the veins.”

As Verilli bandied back and forth with several justices about allegedly painless alternatives to Kentucky’s mixture and fail-safe methods tomonitor the level of unconsciousness in inmates, Justice Antonin Scalia interjected a relevant rejoinder.

“Mr. Verilli,” he said, “This is an execution, not surgery.”

Later, after Verilli asserted that “the pain that is inflicted here when this goes wrong is torturous, excruciating pain under any definition,” Justice Samuel Alito asked him whether every form of execution ever used would be unconstitutional under his position.

As Verilli hemhawed in response, Alito pressed on.

“You have no doubt that the threedrug protocol that Kentucky is using violates the Eighth Amendment,” he said, “but you really cannot express a judgment about any of the other methods that has ever been used?”

In her dissenting argument, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg added to the lexicon of pain in the case, depicting it as “burning and intense” and “dreadful.”

Evidently, describing pain in thehighest court has become as common as filing motions when the death penalty is at issue. Which makes it all the more puzzling why a judge in a capital murder trial would agree to censor descriptions of the pain the victim likelyfelt while attempting to defend herself during a fatal attack. Perhaps it’s a routine defense request.

No doubt the inane distinction turns on some finer point of law, and prohibiting prosecutors from portraying a murder victim’s pain-but allowing criminals to characterize it so vividly when trying to escape their punishment- is technically legal.

But it still doesn’t seem right.

[lorettalockhorn]

Vance jurors: Voted death, but life OK

Respect decision, pair urges

LITTLE ROCK — Two jurors who favored execution for the man convicted of raping and murdering Little Rock TV news anchor Anne Pressly say they’re satisfied with the verdict that spared his life and that critics should respect the outcome.

Deciding a man’s fate is a heavy burden, both agreed.

“I voted for the death penalty, but I was slightly relieved it didn’t [pass],” said Juror Nine, a North Little Rock man. “I kind of got the best of both worlds.”

The two spoke only on the condition of anonymity out of concern over the rancor of critics who wanted to see Curtis Lavelle Vance put to death for the attack.

As long as jurors followed their oath to honestly consider the death penalty, Prosecuting Attorney Larry Jegley said he’s satisfied with the outcome, a jury verdict that resulted in the harshest penalty for Vance short of execution - two consecutive life sentences topped by 30 years in prison and a $35,000 fine.

“Anne Pressly’s family and friends seem satisfied with the outcome,” the prosecutor said. “Curtis Vance had his day in court.”

The only thing left for Vance in Pulaski County is the automatic appeal, Jegley said, predicting Vance’s conviction will be “bulletproof” when it goes before the Arkansas Supreme Court.

With Vance now in prison as Arkansas Department of Correction inmate No. 146095and facing the possibility of a third life sentence over the rape allegations in Lee County that broke the case, Jegley said the community needs to heal.

In the week after the verdict, most of the jurors have avoided talking about the trial. Five jurors didn’t return phone messages, three couldn’t be located, and two declined to comment.

“I don’t want to relive it,” one man said.

The six men and six women enjoyed a cordial relationship during the two weeks of jury selection and trial, even pitching in to buy a cake to celebrate one juror’s 49th birthday. Deliberations were “passionate” and heated at times, more so during the penalty phase, but generally were respectful, they said. Jurors carefully deliberated the evidence against the 29-year-old Marianna man before convicting him on all charges, capital murder, rape, residential burglary and theft, they said.

Jurors gave equally careful consideration to punishment, the pair said, but the 9-3 split in favor of the death penalty resulted in a life sentence. A death sentence requires a unanimous jury decision.

“I am going to respect their decision,” said Juror 12, a North Little Rock woman. “I do firmly feel that he got a fair trial. He had a fair jury.”

Critics who claim they would have no problem imposing death on Vance should respect the deliberations, Juror Nine said.

“I thought, ‘You have no idea, you weren’t in there,’” he said. “I think we did the best we could with what we had.”

The two said they know there was a lot of public sentiment to see Vance put to death for the October 2008 attack on Pressly that shattered her face and inflicted fatal brain injuries. Pressly’s injuries were horrific, Juror 12 said, and she said she can see why Pressly’s friends, supporters and Little Rock residents would feel so strongly that Vance should die for his crimes.

But the life-or-death decision was on the shoulders of the jurors.

“I understand both sides of it,” said the woman, 30. “I know a lot of people ... they want to literally kill him. People need to realize ... you can think all you want, but you really have no right to say anything because you weren’t there, you don’t know the facts, you don’t know the circumstances.”

The jurors said there wasn’t much discussion by the three jurors who favored life about why they thought Vance should be spared. Juror Nine said he knew Vance would be spared when jurors voted on punishment.

“We voted for it and it was 9-3, and pretty much, I knew we weren’t going to get it,” he said.

At least one of the three who favored life was swayed by testimony from Vance’s half-brother and half-sister that he had been a positive and encouraging force in their lives, urging them to work hard and get an education, Juror Nine said. That juror, a woman, favored life in prison so he could continue that role.

Another thought Vance’s three children might benefit from their father’s example, he said.

“The ones that held [for life] said they were open [to imposing the death penalty], but their questions were can he be rehabilitated, can he be a positive influence on his children, can he change people,” Juror Nine said.

The jurors didn’t much discuss their reasons for favoring one punishment over the other, they said. Juror Nine said he favored the death penalty because Vance could have settled for burglarizing Pressly’s home and left her alone.

“The way I looked at it, did he have a rough life, you bet. Was his mom crazy, you bet,” he said. “But he made a choice to go back into that house. That last version, [he said] ‘I took the laptop, I took the purse, came out and went back in.’ He made that conscious choice.”

Defense claims that Vance suffered brain damage as a child didn’t carry much weight with him, Juror Nine said.

“I’ve had friends who had head trauma, and they didn’t do what he did. So I kind of discounted that. I’ve got friends who grew up in rough lifestyles, and they don’t do that.”

Vance’s life choices led Juror 12 to endorse the death penalty for him, she said.

“He supposedly has encouraged everybody in his life. He could have changed himself. He had the mentality enough to help them with their homework, to take care of them. He could have done something for himself. I do not believe he couldn’t have done better,” the woman said. “There’s so many people in this world who have bad childhoods, who have them as bad as his or worse, and they don’t go out killing people.”

Both said that Jegley and chief deputy prosecutor John Johnson presented a compelling case based on DNA evidence and Vance’s own statements and that no jurors seriously disputed Vance’s guilt.

Juror Nine said he doesn’t much follow the news, but had heard about Pressly’s murder and Vance’s arrest. He said he’d also heard just about every rumor about the killing.

“I’d heard all kinds of rumors” he said. “If I put a number to it, I knew about 25 percent of what was going on.”

So he came to trial willing to consider that Vance was innocent, possibly even a victim of conspiracy.

“I’m kind of a skeptical guy, maybe this guy was set up,” he said. “But as it went along, he never really denied he was there, he admitted to beating her, but he could never bring himself to admit raping her.”

Vance’s multiple statements to police that saw him going from admitting to attacking Pressly to a break-in, to blaming the attack on friends, then to denying any involvement, before ultimately confessing to beating and molesting her just showed that Vance had spent his time in jail awaiting trial trying to come up with stories to explain his DNA in her home and convince authorities he was innocent, Juror Nine said...

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...The DNA that led to Vance’s arrest was from a single hair found on her bed, and Juror Nine said he might’ve been able to discount that if not for the other DNA findings from Pressly’s broken left hand and rape kit that also linked Vance to the attack.

“My gut said that thing could come with anywhere, but ... his DNA on her rape kit, I circled that in my notes,” he said.

He said jurors spent most of the 2 1 /2 hours it took them to find Vance guilty discussing the technical aspects of the DNA evidence.

“A lot of time wasn’t weighing the guilt, but making sure we understood the scientific ... explanations,” he said. “Some of that stuff we really had to chug through to make sure you understood.”

Juror 12 said she approached the case skeptically, but the evidence of his guilt was overwhelming. Particularly compelling was Vance’s final statement to police, a 4 1 /2-hour meeting video-recorded and played for jurors.

“The little bit I did know [before trial] had no persuasion on anything about the case,” she said. “I looked at what they gave me. I am in a firm believer that DNA is trustworthy ... but the main thing for me was his video testimony. Some of it comes down to being able to see him.”

Both jurors also thought the defense devoted an excessive amount of time to testimony and evidence showing that Vance’s mother, Jacqueline Burnett, had been an abusive, drug-addicted parent who had occasionally abandoned her children and sometimes singled out Curtis Vance, the oldest of her four children, for mistreatment and torment.

“If I’m not mistaken, Curtis was the one on trial,” Juror 12 said. “We were surprised she would go up there and trash herself as bad as she did. I was not impressed by his mother, and I thought her testimony was more of a show, particularly ... her having to go out and recompose herself. I have a hard time believing her. Here’s a woman who openly admits she didn’t want anything to do with her children and now that he’s [facing execution] she wants to have something to do with him.”

This article was published today at 4:42 a.m.
Arkansas, Pages 7 on 11/23/2009