Blood Ambush (21 page)
Authors: Sheila Johnson
In making his assessment, Dr. McKeown referred to
medical records associated with previous hospitalizations for the Defendant.
He observed that Barbara had a
well documented history of mental health related issues....
In his report Dr. McKeown made reference to Barbara’s reported history of
auditory hallucinations,
beginning in early 2006. During the trial Dr. McKeown said that her mental-health history was “significant.”
medical records associated with previous hospitalizations for the Defendant.
He observed that Barbara had a
well documented history of mental health related issues....
In his report Dr. McKeown made reference to Barbara’s reported history of
auditory hallucinations,
beginning in early 2006. During the trial Dr. McKeown said that her mental-health history was “significant.”
When Dr. Jason Junkins testified about Barbara’s physical condition, he said that Dr. Grant, of the CED Mental Health Center, had diagnosed her with “depression with psychotic features.” Dr. Junkins explained that a person suffering from a psychosis could lose touch with reality and experience visual or auditory hallucinations.
Judge Rains said that the mitigating factor that the court was required to consider was whether Barbara was experiencing extreme mental or emotional disturbance at the time of the offense. This was, he said, an entirely different question from whether Barbara was sane or insane at the time of the murder.
Under ALA. CODE 13A-3-1 (1975), the judge wrote, it was an affirmative defense to a prosecution for any crime that, at the time of the commission of the acts constituting the offense, the defendant, as a result of a severe mental disease or defect, was unable to appreciate the nature and quality or wrongfulness of his acts.
When Dr. McKeown rendered his report on Barbara’s mental condition at the time of the offense, the report supported the affirmative defense of severe mental disease or defect.
For the purpose of sentencing, however, said the judge, the standard for review was completely different, and Dr. McKeown’s report did not address the question of whether Barbara was under extreme emotional disturbance at the time that Darlene Roberts was murdered. While an extreme emotional disturbance was not a defense to the commission of the crime, it was a factor that would be considered in mitigation for sentencing purposes if extreme emotional disturbance was found to have been present at the time of the crime. In other words, the judge said, one can be sane and criminally responsible for his or her behavior, and nevertheless have acted under the influence of an extreme emotional disturbance.
Based on Barbara’s significant history of psychiatric problems, including seven hospitalizations or commitments, the effects of a bipolar disorder, the significance of a history of auditory hallucinations, and her mental-health diagnosis of depression with psychotic features, the court found that the defendant had interjected the issue of whether she was under extreme mental or emotional disturbance at the time in question.
Judge Rains wrote that under ALA. CODE 13-5-45 (g) (1975) when the factual existence of a mitigating circumstance interjected by the defendant was in dispute, the state had the burden of disproving the mitigating circumstance by a majority of the evidence. The court, he said, was not satisfied that mitigating factor had been disproved. Accordingly, he said, the court found that mitigating factor to exist in the case.
3. Whether the victim was a participant in the defendant’s conduct or consented to it.
This court found that Darlene Roberts was not a participant in the defendant’s conduct and found that Darlene Roberts did not consent to it. Accordingly, the court found this mitigating circumstance did not exist in the case.
4. Whether the defendant was an accomplice in the capital offense committed by another person and her participation was relatively minor.
Barbara Ann Roberts was an accomplice with Schiess, Judge Rains stated. While the court believed that Schiess had an influence on Barbara, her participation in the crime was not “relatively minor.”
Barbara disguised herself so that Darlene would not recognize her when she stopped in the belief she was helping a stranded driver. Barbara was wearing a surgical mask, sunglasses, a baseball cap, with her hair tucked inside the cap, and a hooded sweatshirt with the hood pulled up over her head.
Whether her participation in Darlene’s murder was as passive as she described it to the investigators in her statements, or if she was as responsible as her cellmate testified, Barbara’s participation in this crime was not relatively minor.
The court, Judge Rains said, therefore found that this mitigating circumstance did not exist in this case.
5. Whether the defendant acted under extreme duress or under the substantial domination of another person.
In the sentencing order, Judge Rains wrote that the only living people who knew exactly what happened on County Road 941 in Cherokee County, Alabama, on April 6, 2006, were Barbara and Schiess. Neither of them had testified during the trial, and only Barbara had made any statements to law enforcement authorities.
In determining whether she was under extreme duress or under the dominant influence of Schiess on the day in question was a matter that the court would have to determine based on the evidence and the reasonable assumptions to be made from that evidence, the judge said.
Although there was no audio or video recording of Barbara’s interview with investigators on April 19, 2006, he wrote, the officer’s subsequent written account of that interview stated that Barbara first denied having any involvement in Darlene’s murder. After being confronted with her broken eyeglasses, which the officers had found at the crime scene, she told them that she was afraid of Schiess, that he had an “anger management problem,” that he was a heavy drinker, and that she was afraid of what he might do if he found out she had talked to the authorities.
In her April 19, 2006, statement, the judge said, Barbara described Schiess as the principal figure in the murder. According to Barbara, Schiess drove to a point near the home of Darlene Roberts, then stopped his truck and raised the hood to make it appear that his truck was disabled. He flagged Darlene Roberts in an attempt to get her to stop to give aid. Then he attempted to use surgical gauze and plastic ties to gag and subdue her. When she was able to escape and run for her life, Schiess drove into the field in pursuit. According to Barbara, “Schiess pointed the shotgun at Martha Darlene Roberts and shot her three times while she was laying facedown in the pond.”
Based on the state’s evidence presented at trial, Judge Rains said, the court concluded that it was Schiess who bought the shotgun, modified it for use as an especially deadly weapon, and joined a gun club in order to practice with it in preparation for the murder.
Barbara said to the investigators that at the time of the incident she was “really freaking out” and that in an attempt to “shut her up,” Schiess hit her in the face with the butt of the shotgun, breaking her glasses.
Barbara wore a disguise, which was described elsewhere in the order. The mask, which she described, was apparently a surgical mask that had been provided by Schiess.
In her interview on April 20, 2006, Judge Rains said, Barbara made her final statement to the investigators. She again told them that Schiess had killed Darlene Roberts by shooting her with a shotgun at the edge of the pond, where her body was found.
After Darlene Roberts was murdered, the judge wrote, Schiess and Barbara returned to the public road where they had parked, and a passerby saw them standing near Schiess’s black Dodge Dakota pickup. In his testimony the passerby described the woman he saw as having a red face. He said that she appeared to be crying. He testified that the woman’s hair was “messed up,” and he said he saw that the man pushed the woman into the truck.
In the forensic evaluation by Dr. Doug McKeown, Barbara’s statements, the testimony of Dr. Jason Junkins, and other proof, she was described as being physically disabled. Her disability was apparently the result of a serious automobile accident that occurred in May 2004.
Dr. Junkins was the medical provider for inmates at the Cherokee County Detention Center. Based on his treatment of her medical needs during her incarceration, Dr. Junkins was of the opinion that Barbara, if acting alone, did not have the physical ability to abduct another adult.
Based on all the evidence in the case, Judge Rains said, including the defendant’s living arrangements with Schiess, her medical problems that resulted from her 2004 automobile accident, her long history of psychiatric treatment, and her inability to work due to her disability, the court was satisfied that she was mentally, emotionally, physically, and financially dependent on Schiess.
This conclusion, the judge said, by no means excused Barbara’s involvement in the tragic crime. Even from her own statements to the investigators, it was clear that she was not blameless. On the contrary, he said, taken as a whole, he had to conclude from her three statements to the investigators, she was much more than a mere bystander in the murder of Darlene Roberts.
During her many months of incarceration, Barbara was a cellmate with Tonya Regalado. Regalado testified that Barbara told her that when Schiess stopped Darlene on the road, he was drunk, and that when he tried to tie her up, she was able to get away from him. According to Regalado’s testimony, Barbara said that she chased Darlene and shot at her, then said that she found her at the pond, where she fired and missed, then shot Darlene two times in the back. Regalado testified that Barbara told her that Schiess then also shot Darlene twice.
In Barbara’s statements to the investigators, she implicated Schiess as the primary actor. On the other hand, Regalado testified, Barbara told her that both she and Schiess had shot Darlene. Judge Rains said that he believed Regalado’s testimony about her conversations with Barbara was far more incriminating than any of the three statements that Barbara herself had made to the officers.
In Barbara’s statements to the investigating officers, and in Regalado’s testimony and written statements about her conversations with Barbara, she claimed that she and Vernon Roberts were having a sexual affair, which enraged Schiess when he learned of it, and that Darlene Roberts had been murdered for sexual revenge.
In determining the weight to give an inmate’s conversations with a cellmate, Judge Rains said, he had to weigh whether the inmate’s claims to be a killer, and to be the object of men’s sexual desire, was a boastful effort by the inmate to elevate her status in the jail population. While the court was not willing to disregard the incrimination shown by the Regalado testimony, neither was the court willing to disregard the consistency of Barbara’s several claims that Schiess had acted out of jealousy or sexual revenge.
Based on the evidence, and the reasonable inferences therefrom, Judge Rains said that he was satisfied that Schiess had a high degree of culpability. The court, he said, was also satisfied that Barbara’s mental, emotional, physical, and financial dependence on Schiess made her vulnerable to his manipulations. While she was an active participant in the murder of Darlene Roberts, the court was satisfied that Barbara acted under the considerable domination of Schiess.
On the basis of these findings, the judge said, the court found that this mitigating factor did exist in the case.
6. Whether the capacity of the defendant to appreciate the criminality of her conduct or to conform her conduct to the requirements of law was substantially impaired.
Subject to the findings of the court as stated herein, Judge Rains said the court had found that Barbara’s capacity to understand the criminality of her conduct or to control her conduct to meet the requirements of law was not substantially impaired.
Accordingly, he said, the court did not find this mitigating factor to exist in the case.
7. The age of the defendant at the time of the crime.
Barbara Ann Comeaux Roberts was born on April 18, 1956. She was fifty years old at the time of the murder of Darlene Roberts. Her age, the judge said, was not a mitigating factor in this case.
Findings Concerning the Existence or Non-Existence of Non-Statutory Mitigating Circumstances
In this section of his sentencing order, Judge Rains wrote that under ALA. CODE 13A-5-52 (1975) in addition to the statutory mitigating circumstances specified hereinabove, mitigating circumstances should include any aspect of a defendant’s character or record, and any of the circumstances of the offense that the defendant offered as a basis for a sentence of life imprisonment without parole instead of death, and any other relevant mitigating circumstance that the defendant offered as a basis for a sentence of life imprisonment without parole instead of death.
In her attempts to justify overruling the jury’s recommendation of the death penalty, Barbara offered the testimony of Ms. Pamela O’Neal, who worked with the First Baptist Church jail ministry, and Ms. Amanda Yarbrough, who worked with the jail ministry of the Church of God. Both of the women had only known Barbara since she had been incarcerated in the Cherokee County Jail. Both of them told Judge Rains that they felt that Barbara was sincere in her religious beliefs and that she could have a positive influence on others.
Elaine Jones, the legal assistant in Rodney Stallings’s law firm, testified about her acquaintance with Barbara since first coming to know her following Barbara’s arrest. She, too, spoke of her religious beliefs and her concern for Ms. Jones and her family.
Judge Rains said that the court found that the testimony of Ms. O’Neal, Ms. Yarbrough, and Ms. Jones did not support a finding of nonstatutory mitigation.
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