Ah, the workings of the legal mind. John Stephenson, 42, is to die by injection after a jury convicted of him in the March 1996 shooting deaths of three people along a rural Warrick County road. Stephenson is seeking a new trial or new sentencing. Here is what his attorney says:
During Stephenson's eight-month trial in Warrick Superior Court, the sheriff's department required Stephenson to wear a stun belt under his clothes as a security measure. If Stephenson had misbehaved in court, a sheriff's deputy could have delivered a painful electric shock with a remote control, which did not happen.
State public defender Steve Schutte argued Wednesday that four to six of the original trial jurors saw the stun belt and realized what it was for.
"That says to a jury, 'This is a dangerous man,' . . ."
So jurors might have considered him a dangerous man because they saw the stun belt, not, you know, because he was charged with KILLING THREE PEOPLE.
