3 days ago
Appellate court grants stay, halting start of Tarrant County death penalty trial
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has in effect stopped the beginning of evidence presentation to a jury in the capital murder trial of a man whom authorities accuse of beating a woman to death. Police found the victim's body in the dirt of a crawl space underneath the defendant's house in west Fort Worth.
The appellate court in Austin last week granted an emergency stay of trial court proceedings in the Valerian O'Steen case in Tarrant County. A jury was set on Tuesday morning to begin to consider prosecutors' case in chief in the 371st District Court.
The Tarrant County District Attorney's Office is seeking the death penalty.
The stay is in effect until the Court of Criminal Appeals rules on O'Steen's petition for a directive known as a writ of mandamus. It is not clear when a ruling, in which the court could order the state to perform DNA testing on six pieces of physical evidence or order that the testing is not required, will come. The ruling may be issued on Wednesday.
Defense attorneys Bob Gill, Miles Brissette and Colin McLaughlin were appointed to represent O'Steen. The attorneys filed an emergency motion for a stay connected to their argument for DNA analysis of items that were found at O'Steen's house. Prosecutors noted that the items tested presumptively negative for blood.
O'Steen is accused of killing Marissa Grimes, who was 26 and the mother of two young children. Her body was found wrapped in blankets and a gray tarp underneath the single-story house.
Grimes' relatives had reported her missing. Police found her U-Haul abandoned on Lake Como Drive, about a mile from O'Steen's house on Locke Avenue, according to the account of a homicide detective that is included in an affidavit supporting O'Steen's arrest warrant.
On Feb. 22, 2022, police executed a search warrant at O'Steen's house and found a crawl space entry in a bedroom closet. A SWAT officer looked down into the space and saw a mound of dirt and smelled an odor of decomposition. The next day, police found Grimes' body in the crawl space.
A Tarrant County Medical Examiner's Office pathologist determined that her death was a homicide caused by blunt force trauma to the head.
Judge Ryan Hill on May 19 denied a defense motion that sought an order directing the state to complete DNA testing that Gill, Brissette and McLaughlin argued is compulsory under the Texas criminal procedure code.
'After closely reviewing the evidence, applicable crime scene reports and ... laboratory reports, the defense realized that six items of biological evidence that were agreed to be tested were not subjected to DNA testing,' Gill wrote in petition for a writ of mandamus.
The items to be tested from among all of the collected physical evidence were agreed upon by the state and defense and tested by the state, Deputy Criminal Division Chief Allenna Bangs wrote in response to the defense motion that was denied in the district court.
'The defense was aware of what was tested, what was pushed forward for further testing, and what requests were made of each item tested,' Bangs wrote.
The items on the defense list were tested for blood evidence to be processed for DNA and did not yield any positive results, Bangs wrote.
In urging the Court of Criminal Appeals to deny O'Steen's petition for an order directing the DNA testing, the state questioned the timing of the defense motion.
O'Steen's attorneys 'waited until the jury was nearly selected to request additional DNA testing. Recognizing the possible dilatory tactics in not requesting testing earlier the trial court properly denied [O'Steen's] request for additional testing on the eve of trial,' Assistant Criminal District Attorney Victoria Ford Oblon, who handles appellate matters, wrote in the state's response to the defense petition.
Jury selection is, in cases in which the state is seeking the death penalty, conducted with one prospective juror at a time. It began in the O'Steen case on March 27.
Prosecutors allege that O'Steen was in the course of committing or attempting to commit obstruction or retaliation when he beat Grimes to death.
O'Steen, who is 27, is the second capital murder defendant for whom the state is seeking the death penalty to go to trial in Tarrant County this year.
A jury in May found Lamont Cousins guilty of capital murder in the December 2020 killings of three people and assessed his punishment as life in prison without eligibility for parole. Juries in Tarrant County last year sent three defendants to death row.
Six days before Grimes' body was found, O'Steen pointed a gun at another woman and threatened to harm her if she left his house, according to the arrest warrant affidavit.
The woman later described to detectives seeing blood in the hall near the kitchen entryway. O'Steen told her it belonged to a man whom he assaulted, according to the arrest warrant affidavit. The detectives believe that Grimes was already dead, and the blood belonged to her.
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If the jury finds O'Steen guilty of capital murder, it will hear evidence in a second trial phase and consider two options: life in prison without eligibility for parole or the death penalty.
In the punishment phase, jurors would weigh whether the state proved beyond a reasonable doubt that it is probable that O'Steen would commit future criminal acts of violence that would constitute a continuing threat to society. The panel also would weigh whether there was mitigating evidence that a juror might regard as reducing O'Steen's moral blameworthiness that would warrant a sentence of life in prison without parole.
Judge Hill presided at a brief hearing on Monday morning at which he noted the stay and asked the state and defense about resulting scheduling matters.
Prosecutor Bangs suggested during the hearing that the disputed six items had recently been submitted to the Fort Worth Police Department Crime Laboratory, which expects to have DNA test results within 30 days. A bottle of bleach and stained wash cloth are among the items.
Bangs represents the state in the case with Assistant Criminal District Attorney Peter Gieseking.
Gill appeared to expect to argue unresolved defense motions at the Monday hearing.
'Can't have any pre-trial hearings on a stay, Bob,' Judge Hill said.
When Gill continued, appearing to argue that the stay did not preclude discussion of other defense motions, the judge said the court would communicate updated scheduling information that night.
'That'll be all,' Hill said. The judge rose from his chair and walked away from the bench and out of the courtroom.
Gill, a former state district judge, stood at the defense table and watched Hill exit.
'We'd ask the court to ...' Gill said before abandoning his sentence.
The defense attorney was facing the bench and an empty judge's swivel chair.
The month before Grimes died, O'Steen refused for several days to allow her to leave his house, repeatedly pointed a gun at her and threatened to kill her, according to law enforcement authorities.
At some point, Grimes sent a text message to her father asking for help, and police located her.
O'Steen was arrested at that time on domestic violence crimes. He was released from a Tarrant County jail within a few days after he posted a $5,000 bond.
