PORT ANGELES — Clallam County Prosecuting Attorney Deb Kelly is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review the state Supreme Court’s May 10 ruling calling for a new trial for accused double-murderer Darold Stenson of Sequim.
Kelly announced the decision Wednesday.
“The Washington state Attorney General’s Office will prepare the certiorari petition and seek review of our state court decision in the United States Supreme Court,” she said in a statement.
The petition must be filed no later than Aug. 8, Kelly said in the statement.
The state Attorney General’s Office would argue the case, Kelly said Wednesday in an interview.
Stenson, now 59, was sentenced to death in 1994 for the 1993 slaying of his wife, Denise, and a business partner, Frank Hoerner, at Stenson’s exotic-bird farm near Sequim.
He since has been on death row at the state penitentiary in Walla Walla.
In an 8-1 ruling in May, the state high court reversed the conviction and death sentence and called for a new trial in his double-murder case.
Court: Rights violated
The court said Stenson’s rights were violated because the state “wrongfully suppressed” photographs that raised questions about mishandling of evidence as well as FBI information on the case that wasn’t provided to the defense until 2009, years after Stenson was convicted.
“We don’t believe there was actual suppression,” Kelly said.
The high court said in its ruling that other than two key pieces of evidence that tied Stenson to the shootings, the remainder of evidence provided at trial was “largely circumstantial.”
Those two pieces of evidence — gunshot residue found inside the front pocket of the jeans Stenson was wearing when officers arrived, and blood spatter on the front of those jeans “consistent with Hoerner’s blood protein profile” — were at the heart of Stenson’s appeal to the high court.
At issue were photographs showing Sheriff’s Detective Monty Martin wearing Stenson’s jeans with the right pocket turned out and Martin’s ungloved hands, and an FBI file indicating an agent who testified did not perform a gunshot residue test, which the court said was implied at the trial.
Stenson has filed multiple appeals to his death sentence, and courts have stayed his execution three times, most recently in 2008 when he was less than two weeks from a scheduled execution.