USA - Arkansas. The Arkansas Supreme Court overturned the death penalty sentence for Steven Victor Wert

The Arkansas Supreme Court overturned the death penalty sentence for Steven Victor Wertz on a technicality regarding jury forms. Wertz was convicted in 2007 for the 1986 slayings of Terry and Kathy Watts. Wertz was free for 20 years before being brought to justice and tried and convicted of the killings and sentenced to death by lethal injection by a Sharp County jury. Although Wertz was always the primary suspect in the crimes, because the motive for the slayings was determined early on to be a result of the loss of a child custody case between Belinda Wertz, who was married to Wertz at the time and was Terry Watts' ex-wife. According to Arkansas Code 5-4-603, requires any jury deliberating a possible death penalty sentence to complete 3 forms in addition to the verdict form. The first requires the jury to determine whether any statutory aggravating factors exist beyond a reasonable doubt. The 2nd form requires jury findings in regard to any mitigating factors and the final form requires the jury to determine whether any existing aggravating circumstances outweigh any existing mitigating circumstances and whether the aggravating circumstances justify a death sentence. In Wertz's case after the sentence was handed down, the jury was only given a single set of forms listing the aggravating factors as the commission of the capital murder knowingly created a risk to a person other than the victim and the purpose of the murders was to prevent an arrest or effect an escape from custody. The 2nd form listed no mitigating circumstances. On the final form, the jury determined there were aggravating circumstances beyond a reasonable doubt outweighed any mitigating circumstances and that the aggravating circumstances warranted the death sentence. The verdict form gave all jurors the option to select either life in prison, or the death penalty, and the jury unanimously voted to hand down the death sentence. Wertz argues the combining of the penalty phase forms violated the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments by sentencing him to death without unanimously finding beyond a reasonable doubt each fact necessary to impose the death penalty. The Supreme Court found no merit in the claim. Wertz argues that a single set of penalty-phase verdict forms on the 2 counts of capital murder constituted a defect or breakdown in the appellate process. The court stated the single submission "makes it impossible to determine whether the jury applied the aggravated to Terry's murder, Kathy's murder or both murders." The court said the single set of forms was an error that impacts the validity of the death sentence.