A divided Missouri Supreme Court struck down a Pine Lawn gang member’s death penalty sentence in a second case in less than a year today, saying a prospective juror was removed for “racially discriminatory reasons” and jurors were told of the death penalty in another case that was later reversed.
Vincent McFadden, 26, has been convicted of separate murders twice, and sentenced to death both times.
Last March, jurors found McFadden guilty of first-degree murder, armed criminal action, and witness tampering for the fatal shooting of his ex-girlfriend’s sister Leslie Addison, 18, on May 15, 2003.
During the penalty phase of the trial, they were told that he had been convicted and sentenced to death in 2005 for the 2002 shooting of Todd Franklin, 20.
But in May, the week before he was sentenced, the Missouri Supreme Court overturned the conviction in the Franklin case. In that 4-3 decision, Missouri Supreme Court Judge Ronnie L. White ruled that prosecutor Mark Bishop had rejected some of the jurors for racially discriminatory reasons.
Today, the court said that the Franklin conviction and death penalty were two of the six aggravating factors that prosecutors presented to jurors when arguing for the death penalty and the sentence “cannot stand.”
The court also rejected Bishop’s arguments that a black woman with “crazy-looking red hair” was removed from the prospective jury pool for race-neutral reasons, saying it was really “racially discriminatory.”
Last year, Bishop vowed to retry McFadden in the Franklin case.