About half of the jurors made themselves available for interview after the penalty phase. They were all not only at ease with their decision, but enthusiastic about it. The man was guilty and he deserved execution. None of them would lose sleep over it.
Did they buy into the defense’s medical witnesses at all? No way. One male juror explained what it was like to hear the defense’s scientific theories. He felt “dazzled with brilliance, and baffled with bs.” A female juror said she felt it was possible for a man to do these heinous things and not be insane. Another male juror characterized Stanko as “worse than a monster,” a guy who “had everyone conned.” What about the testimony that he’d had brain damage from the time he was a baby? They didn’t believe a word of it. “He was temporarily insane when he wanted to be temporarily insane” was how one put it.
The jurors agreed that the witness who most influenced them was Penny Ling. The teenager’s words were something they never would be able to forget. She communicated how brutal, vile, and disgusting the attack had been. One male juror said that listening to the 911 tape was one of the hardest things he’d ever done. The little girl calling for her mommy. It brought tears to his eyes. A female juror noted that even though Laura Ling had not been around to testify, they felt like she was. Dr. Collins’s testimony, and her drawn diagram of Laura Ling—with all of the wounds clearly marked—made it seem as if the victim was testifying from the grave, telling the jurors what a monster Stanko was.
Anyone who was used to watching murder trials on TV, such as trials involving celebrities in California, might have expected to see Stephen Stanko’s trial go on for many weeks, if not months.
But that was not the way things were done in South Carolina.
“I’ve never seen a quicker slam-bang job in my entire life,” recalled Dr. Gordon Crews, who was there for all of it. “One week, boom, guilty. One week, boom, death. Over. That’s South Carolina justice, man. It was cold and quick.”
Just the way the taxpayers like it.
Outside the courtroom, a reporter found Laura Ling’s mother, Sue Hudson, who was in town from Garland, Texas, to see justice done. Asked what she thought of the sentencing, Hudson said she was “tickled to death” that Stephen Stanko was getting the death penalty.
APPEAL
Up until the late 1900s, South Carolina executions were carried out by the same staff that manned death row, forcing state executioners to kill men they had grown to know. In the modern system, separate staffs tended to the prisoners and executed them, and there were fewer debilitating cases of depression to worry about.
From 1912 to 1990, South Carolina’s death row was at the Central Correctional Institution in Columbia. From 1990 to 1997, it was at the Broad River Correctional Institution, before moving to its current location.
Following his sentencing, Stephen Stanko was sent to live on death row in the Lieber Correctional Institution in Ridgeville.
Executions were carried out at the Broad River Capital Punishment Facility, the state’s only death house. Since 1912, South Carolina had executed prisoners in the electric chair. A fourteen-year-old black male once took the long walk—but that was ancient history now.
Prisoners on death row for crimes committed before 1995 had a choice: the electric chair or lethal injection? If they refused to pick, they got the chair. The last prisoner to go out crackling and smoking died in 2008.
Criminals whose crimes came after 1995 received the lethal injection, which was administered in the same area as the electric chair. Even those who got the shot saw “Ol’ Sparky,” looking like a terrifying Grand Guignol set piece, just before they died.
Three members of the media would be allowed to witness Stanko’s death—one print, one electronic, one wire service. Three members of the victim’s family could be there.
Also allowed to watch Stanko die would be a man or woman of the cloth, a lawyer representing the rights of the prisoner, and Gregory Hembree, the solicitor who earned Stanko’s conviction.
Perhaps it was a good thing that an obligatory marathon of legal activity preceded an execution. DNA testing proved that sometimes the system got it wrong.
Executions now occurred in South Carolina between once and three times a year. So it was par for the course that Stanko didn’t figure to die any day soon. Before South Carolina could make plans to off him, there was a plethora of legal business to tend to, most of it in Horry County where Stanko’s responsibility for the Turner murder remained unresolved.
At the end of the summer of 2007, Stephen Stanko had his first appellate hearing in a Columbia, South Carolina, courtroom. His appellate attorneys were Kathrine Haggard Hudgins and Joseph L. Savitz III, both assistant appellate defenders for the South Carolina Commission on Indigent Defense.
Savitz—B.A. in English from Clemson, 1977, J.D. from the University of South Carolina School of Law— had been one of the defenders since 1982, and he specialized in death penalty cases. Hudgins, who went to the same law school, earned her B.A. at the College of Charleston. Hudgins proved to be a woman who, when given a choice, always chose both. She had a bundle of experience working both sides, as both an assistant solicitor and as a public defender. She also had a private practice that handled crime cases, both state and federal, and at both the trial and appellate level. Into journalism, too, she served on the criminal law committee, and the editorial board for the renowned South Carolina Lawyer magazine.
In March of 2008, Savitz and Hudgins argued that Stephen Stanko didn’t get a fair trial because, during voir dire, the judge wouldn’t allow potential jurors their opinion on the insanity defense, and she had failed to instruct the jury on an additional and unrequested statutory mitigating circumstance during the penalty phase. Regarding voir dire, the supreme court noted that when Judge Deadra Jefferson refused to allow William Diggs to question potential jurors regarding their feelings specifically on the insanity defense, Diggs had stated for the record that he was “abandoning” that line of questioning. Therefore, no issue was preserved for appellate review, since the objecting party accepted the court’s ruling and did not contemporaneously make an additional objection. In order for Judge Jefferson’s ruling during voir dire to constitute a reversible error, the limitation she placed on questioning must have rendered the trial fundamentally unfair, and that was not the case. In fact, the court characterized the voir dire as impartial and unbiased.
The supreme court voted four-to-one in favor of denying the new trial. Chief Justice Jean Hoefer Toal wrote that the jury process was fair because the qualified jurors were impartial, unbiased and capable of following the law. There was no indication that the trial had been rendered fundamentally unfair by the court’s limitations on voir dire. The lone dissenting vote came from Justice Costa Pleicones, who maintained that Stanko’s attorneys should have been able to “probe jurors’ bias” with respect to the insanity defense.
Disappointed, Savitz said he would appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, adding, “People that don’t think insanity is a defense aren’t qualified to sit on the jury. We don’t know if we got twelve jurors who just don’t think insanity is a defense, thought he was insane but thought that was all the more reason to give him the death penalty.”
Connie Price, the woman who tried to report Stephen Stanko to the authorities just days before the murders, was contacted not long after the trial by Los Angeles television producer and author Larry Garrison, president of SilverCreek Entertainment.
Garrison told her he wanted to write a book and produce a feature film on how she “eluded” Stanko and later testified against him.
When Kelly Marshall Fuller, of the Myrtle Beach Sun News, contacted Garrison, he admitted that he had books and feature films in the works on a number of subjects, including Michael Jackson (who was alive then) and the L.A. murder of Bonny Lee Bakley.
Stephen Stanko was noteworthy enough for CBS to dedicate an entire episode (January 13, 2007) of its 48 Hours program to him. Troy Roberts, a network i
nvestigator, spent days interviewing Stanko, trying to find out what made him tick. Stanko made a very strong first impression on Roberts. He had manners, looks, and smarts. It didn’t seem at first to Roberts that Stanko was capable of depraved deeds. And that was what made the story so compelling.
One of the key witnesses interviewed by CBS was Dr. Thomas Sachy, who explained that he “took on” the Stephen Stanko case because from all of the things he’d read in the literature—in the news articles regarding his capture and what he had done—Stanko was probably a psychopath. He described PET technology and how cool and shriveled Stanko’s frontal lobes were.
In response, Gregory Hembree was concise. “Junk science,” he said.
Not all of the trial’s participants watched the 48 Hours episode on Stanko, and some skipped it even during an encore appearance. “I have had three or four people tell me they saw me on the 48 Hours episode, but I missed it both times,” Kelly Crolley said.
On Friday, March 16, 2007, Stephen Stanko’s mother, Joan, passed away at the age of seventy-two in Summerville Medical Center.
Two and a half months later, Penny Ling, now seventeen, graduated with honors from Dutch Fork High School, home of the Silver Foxes, in Irmo, South Carolina. The Associated Press covered the event, and Penny repeated for them that she didn’t mind being identified in the media. She hoped her openness and her story would help other assault victims.
She said, “If there’s anything I can do to show anyone who’s ever been the victim of domestic violence, or who’s been through something similar, that you can piece your life together, even at fifteen. You can make something out of this.”
Asked her plans, Penny said she was attending a nearby university that autumn. She said that every day she lived, every success she enjoyed, every accomplishment she achieved, was not just a reminder of her strength, but also a reminder of Stephen Stanko’s weakness.
She smiled as she told the reporter she was a living example that he “failed at one of the last things he’ll ever do.”
In the days and weeks following Stanko’s death sentence, Penny said, she closed the door on that chapter of her life. The day she walked out of that courtroom, after testifying, was the day he died as far as she was concerned.
“It’s done,” she said. “Even though he took my mom away, I’m probably the best representation of who my mom was. So in a way, she’s still here.”
SECOND TRIAL
Time passed. By June 2009, Stephen Stanko was appealing his conviction by claiming his trial lawyer was inadequate. Despite this, Stanko had no intention of switching lawyers for his second trial. William Diggs was his man—inadequate or not. Stanko’s second death penalty trial, for the killing of Henry Lee Turner, was scheduled to begin November 9, 2009, in the Horry County Courthouse.
It would be the first capital case to be tried in Horry County since February 2008, when Louis “Mick” Winkler was accused of shooting to death his estranged wife, Rebekah Grainger, in her condo complex while he was free on bail and wearing an ankle bracelet, awaiting trial on charges that he’d kidnapped and raped her. After the shooting, Winkler fled on foot. A golf course employee on the job spotted a man in the woods off the fairway, and called 911 on March 20, 2006. The suspicious man was wearing torn clothes and was covered with dirt. He was chased through the woods near River Hills by police with dogs for three hours before he was captured. Jury selection for that headline-maker began on January 2008, and a pool of two hundred was needed to build a panel of twelve. Gregory Hembree had been representing the people at that one, too. The judge was James Lockemy, and the jury brought the verdict in late on a Saturday night. During the penalty phase, Hembree focused on the reasons they were seeking the death penalty. Hembree was on the record as feeling that only the “worst of the worst” killers should be executed, and he felt Winkler qualified. Here was a guy who killed a woman that he, in theory, had once been in love with, and why? To save his own skin! Colder than cold. Such depravity gave you the shivers.
In South Carolina, the death penalty was saved for cases with aggravating circumstances—say if the victim was a child, or a cop, or involving rape. In this case, the aggravating circumstance was that Winkler killed a witness against him of a previous crime. South Carolina was not quick to kill prisoners. Horry County had five men on death row during the Winkler trial; one had been there since 1996. Hembree thought the time between sentencing and execution should be cut. “There is room for reform,” he said. “There are ways you can speed up the process.” Reformation, he warned, shouldn’t be reckless. There were people who thought the execution process wasn’t punishment enough. The killers had an opportunity to say good-bye to their friends and loved ones, but the victims of their crimes did not. Some felt the defendant should be taken directly from the courtroom to the waiting needle. No stopping to pass Go or collect two hundred dollars. But that was the other extreme. Execution was final, so “it required a level of scrutiny on both sides,” Hembree said. Following the penalty phase of Winkler’s trial, the defendant turned to the jury and begged for his life. The jury deliberated twelve hours before returning with thumbs-down.
Now Gregory Hembree was eager to return to room 3B in the Horry County Courthouse and prepare to handle the special difficulties trying Stephen Stanko a second time would entail. The first trial had only made Stanko more notorious. An extraordinarily large sample of jury summonses and questionnaires were sent out in hopes of finding sixteen impartial jurors. Four and a half years had passed since Stanko’s violent rampage. That helped the jury pool forget the case’s vivid details.
On the downside, there was the matter of Stanko’s name. “He has a unique name,” Hembree said. “It’s one [that] people remember because it is so different. If his name was Smith, people may not remember, but with a name like Stanko, they don’t forget—so that doesn’t help us.”
The solicitor was fairly certain that an impartial jury could be found. He was encouraged by the fact that Georgetown County had done it only one year after the crimes. If Georgetown County could do it then, Horry County could do it now.
Presiding over the preliminary hearings, as well as the trial, was Fifteenth Judicial Circuit Court judge Steven H. John, who grew up in North Augusta, South Carolina, and graduated in 1975 from the Citadel, with a degree in political science. He earned his law degree three years later at the University of South Carolina School of Law and began his legal career as a law clerk for a judge. In 1986, he opened his own practice in North Myrtle Beach, and from 1993 through 2001, he was the pro bono lawyer for the Horry County Disabilities and Special Needs agency. He married Susan Watts John, who was the director of Family Services for that agency. In 2001, he was elected as resident circuit judge of the Fifteenth Judicial Circuit, a position he’d held ever since.
Judge John was no stranger to big-time murder cases. During the spring of 2008, he presided over the double-homicide trial of Richard Gagnon. (Gregory Hembree was the prosecutor in that one, too.) Gagnon was originally arrested with his girlfriend, Bambi Bennett, and they were charged with the 2005 murders of Diane and Charles Parker Sr., Bennett’s mother and stepfather. Diane was found in the bedroom, Charles in the bathroom, both shot, the scene a bloody mess. Gagnon and Bennett had been an item for two years when the murders took place, and the Parkers were Gagnon’s employers. Bambi spent six months in jail, but she was released before the trial because of “lack of DNA evidence” against her. Suspicion at first was that Bambi had traded freedom for cooperation, but in the long run, she didn’t testify at the trial for either side. The state hardly had an airtight case against Gagnon, one drop of victim blood on otherwise clean sneakers, and a claim by one interrogator that Gagnon had told him things that “only the killer could know.” Kept intentionally vague, these things apparently involved blood evidence at the crime scene from a third unnamed individual. To boost its case, the prosecution hauled out a jailhouse snitch. Gagnon’s big defense witness was also a caged canary,
a cell mate who said he sure acted innocent when first thrown in the can. The trial was covered live by truTV, and resulted in a conviction. Judge John sentenced Gagnon to life in prison, without chance of parole.
Now, at Stephen Stanko’s October 8, 2009, hearing, Judge John heard twenty-three motions by Gregory Hembree and William Diggs, setting up the ground rules for the trial.
Stanko, during his court appearances, would not be in handcuffs or leg shackles, unless his behavior dictated otherwise. The jury would be sequestered during the trial and guarded by SLED agents.
On the day before Halloween, Stanko was transferred from his home on death row in Ridgeville, South Carolina, to the J. Reuben Long Detention Center in Conway, where he would be caged for the duration of his trial.
The Horry County Courthouse was on Third Avenue in the heart of Conway. The redbrick building, with white trim and pillars, was more than twice the size of its counterpart in Georgetown County. Several additions at the sides and back had been put on since the courthouse opened in 1908. (The courthouse before that, built in the 1820s, was still there, just down the street, and served as the Conway Town Hall.) The “new” courthouse came with a large front lawn, protected by mature shade trees, and a long driveway leading to the front entrance, giving it a plantation in the Old South feel. The building figured to be a busy place, if everything went as scheduled. Two noteworthy trials were slated to begin more or less simultaneously, the other being that of Miles Ferguson, from Ohio, who was charged with homicide via child abuse in connection with the death of his five-week-old daughter in July 2007 as the family vacationed in Myrtle Beach. Also on trial in the second week of November was Rodell Vereen, who faced buggery charges in connection with sexual activity with a horse.
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