FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 27, 2009
State asks Supreme Court to reconsider Camm ruling
Guilty verdicts for slayings should not be reversed, rehearing petition says
INDIANAPOLIS – The Office of the Indiana Attorney General today is filing a petition for a rehearing asking the Indiana Supreme Court to reconsider its earlier opinion granting David Camm a new trial.
Camm is the former Indiana State Police trooper convicted of the September 2000 slayings of his wife Kimberly (Renn) Camm, 35, son Bradley Camm, 7, and daughter Jill Camm, 5. David Camm, who is serving a life sentence, appealed his murder convictions. On June 26, the Indiana Supreme Court decided 4-1 to grant Camm a new trial.
“Twice before, juries have convicted Camm of these charges; and even the Indiana Supreme Court majority has found there was sufficient evidence to convict. Separate from our arguments in the petition itself, we believe that Camm’s previous verdict should be reinstated in the interests of justice, rather than putting the victims’ family through a further ordeal and burdening taxpayers with the cost of a third high-profile trial a decade after the fact,” Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller said.
The Attorney General’s office represents the State of Indiana in criminal appeals.
At issue in Camm’s appeal was whether or not prosecutors in the 2006 trial should have been allowed to suggest to jurors that Camm was connected to sexual abuse of Camm’s daughter two days before the slayings. The Supreme Court majority had ordered a new trial partly on that basis, even though the Court’s majority found there was sufficient other evidence beyond the abuse to support the murder convictions.
“We respect the Court’s rulings, but in this instance we believe the majority decision overlooked key parts of the trial record and the State’s arguments, leaving a confusing precedent for lower courts to follow,” Zoeller said. “We contend the trial court judge did not make an error by allowing the jury to hear the sexual-abuse evidence, nor did the jury become prejudiced against Camm by hearing it. We believe the dissenting opinion by Chief Justice Randall Shepard – who would have affirmed Camm’s conviction – was correct.”
“Accordingly, today the Attorney General’s office is filing a petition for rehearing, asking the Indiana Supreme Court to grant a new hearing to address these concerns – and by doing so, to affirm Camm’s convictions on three counts of murder,” Zoeller added.
Camm’s wife and two children were gunned down in the family’s home in Georgetown, Ind., in Floyd County in 2000. Camm’s conviction in his first trial, in 2002, was vacated on appeal. He was retried in 2006 in Warrick County, where the jury convicted him of three counts of murder. Camm was sentenced to life imprisonment.
“We're hopeful the Indiana Supreme Court will grant a rehearing to allow us to provide the rationale to reconsider their ruling granting Camm a third trial and to let the jury's guilty verdict stand,” Zoeller said.