Columbia-area killer’s double-murder death sentence overturned by federal court panel

A condemned killer on South Carolina’s death row deserves a new sentencing trial after a judge failed to “consider” all favorable evidence for him in the case, a majority of the federal 4th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled.

The 2-1 opinion, released Tuesday by the three-judge panel, said Quincy Allen, who was the last person sentenced to death in Richland County, deserves a new sentencing hearing for a pair of brutal murders he committed with a shotgun in the Columbia area in 2002.

The court said that the judge who sentenced Allen to death after 10 days of testimony in 2005 “did not consider all of Allen’s mitigating evidence” and sometimes “assigned no weight at all” to crucial mitigating evidence that works in favor of the defendant.

“Allen’s death sentence cannot stand,” the appeals panel ruled.

Allen, now 42, had a severe mental illness at the time of the killings and the sentence would likely have been different if the judge had not “excluded, ignored or overlooked” defense testimony concerning it, the panel said.

Lawyers connected to the case said Tuesday that among the possibilities of what happens next are an appeal by the S.C. Attorney General’s office to the U.S. Supreme Court or to bring Allen’s case back to Richland County for a new sentencing hearing.

“We have received a copy of the decision and are reviewing both the majority and dissenting opinions,” Robert Kittle, a spokesman for the attorney general, told The State by email. “We decline to discuss the possibility of further action in this matter as it is still currently in litigation.”

Allen confessed to killing four people in 2002, two in North Carolina at a convenience store and two in South Carolina. He received life sentences without parole for the North Carolina murders.

In the South Carolina killings, he shot and killed Dale Hall and Jedediah Harr, both with a sawed-off shotgun, in two separate incidents. Allen also shot and severely wounded a homeless man lying on a Columbia park bench in Finlay Park with his shotgun, but that was not part of the current case.

Allen was arrested in Texas, brought back to South Carolina, where a Richland County grand jury indicted Allen in 2002 for two counts of murder in the deaths of Hall and Harr.

In 2004, then-5th Circuit Solicitor Barney Giese filed a notice of intent to seek the death penalty. State Judge G. Thomas Cooper presided, and appointed defense attorneys Fielding Pringle, April Sampson, Robert Lominack and Kim Stevens to represent Allen.

In 2005, Pringle and other defense attorneys met with Cooper and came away convinced there was a chance he would sentence Allen to life in prison without parole if Allen forfeited his right to a jury trial and pleaded guilty.

On Feb. 28, 2005, Allen pleaded guilty. The next month, the penalty phase of the trial began before Cooper.

Defense lawyers presented testimony by five specialists who were social worker Deborah Grey, general and forensic psychiatrist Dr. Pamela Crawford, forensic and correctional psychiatrist Dr. Donna Schwartz-Watts, general and forensic psychiatrist Dr. George Corvin, and child psychiatrist Dr. Richard Harding.

All testified about Allen’s severe mental issues, including schizophrenia, and indicated his mental illnesses made him ineligible for the death penalty.

Prosecutors put up their own specialists, who were forensic psychiatrist Dr. Karla deBeck, forensic psychologist Dr. David Hattem, forensic psychologist Dr. Camilla Tezza, psychiatrist Dr. Majonna Mirza, and forensic psychiatrist Dr. James Ballenger. All countered to a large extent the defense expert witnesses.

On March 18, 2005, after 10 days of testimony, the judge sentenced Allen to death, saying he “had not seen convincing evidence that Mr. Allen had a major mental illness” at the time of his 2002 killings.

“I remember that case well,” Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott told The State Tuesday. “He was one of the most cold-blooded killers I’ve ever seen. He was on a killing spree, and we had overwhelming evidence.”

The federal appeals panel wrote in its Tuesday opinion that in addition of not heeding serious mitigation evidence, Judge Cooper also overlooked testimony regarding an extremely abusive childhood Allen had suffered.

If evidence concerning Allen’s history of childhood abuse and his severe mental illnesses had not been overlooked by the judge, the outcome of the sentencing hearing may well have been different, the panel ruled.

Pringle, now a 5th Circuit public defender who helped defend Allen at his 2005 trial, said Tuesday, “It is a relief to the trial team to see in this opinion that the well-documented severe childhood abuse and neglect and the history of mental illness suffered by Quincy his whole life has finally led to the appropriate ruling.”

In a dissenting opinion, federal Judge Allison Jones Rushing said the majority’s portrayal of Cooper’s not paying attention to all the mitigating evidence is “not accurate” because Cooper himself said during the hearing that he had read and heard all the evidence.

The panel’s majority judges are Chief Judge Roger Gregory and Judge Pamela Harris.

In 2009, the S.C. Supreme Court unanimously upheld Cooper’s decision. Since then, the case has been wending its way through various courts on appeal.

South Carolina’s last execution was in 2011.

The S.C. Department of Corrections has had difficulty getting the necessary chemicals for lethal injections. In addition, defense lawyers have fought vigorously at every stage of the judicial system to challenge death sentences.