Jury recommends death for Scott Cheever
Ron Sylvester/The Wichita Eagle
Friday, November 2, 2007
By Ron Sylvester
The Wichita Eagle
EUREKA — Scott Cheever showed little emotion, even as he talked about killing Sheriff Matt Samuels, and he kept the same stoic expression when he heard a jury decide he should die for the murder.
It took eight women and four men fewer than two hours Thursday to condemn Cheever, 26, to execution.
Lawyers wrapped up evidence and finished closing arguments around 1:30 p.m. Some jurors asked to take a smoke break before beginning deliberations about 15 minutes later. They announced reaching a unanimous verdict by 3:30 p.m.
Judge Mike Ward praised family members for their decorum during the trial and asked for it to continue before he read the verdict.
Samuels’ family and friends sat silent, showing little outward emotions except for a few slight smiles.
Cheever’s aunt, Teresa Aikman, burst into tears when the verdict was read. She and Cheever’s sister hugged each other and cried outside the courthouse but would not speak publicly.
The quick verdict culminated nearly three years of bringing Cheever to trial after he shot the sheriff Jan. 19, 2005.
“We have waited a long time for today, and now we ask you to respect our privacy as we begin to move forward with our lives,” Samuels’ widow, Tammy Samuels, said outside the courthouse after learning the verdict.
Death penalty in flux
Part of the reason the case took so long to prosecute was the doubtful state of Kansas’ death penalty law, which has been in flux since the first cases began coming up for appeal this decade.
Less than a month before Samuels’ death, the Kansas Supreme Court ruled the law unconstitutional. Federal authorities filed charges against Cheever, seeking capital punishment in that court. Then in the summer of 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the state court’s decision.
Nine men sit in prison with death sentences in Kansas. The state reinstated capital punishment in 1994 but has not carried out an execution since 1965.
Barry Disney, an assistant state attorney general who helped prosecute Cheever, said federal laws would have required proving that the manufacture of methamphetamine led to Samuels’ death.
“While that evidence was there, it wasn’t necessary to prove on the state level,” Disney said.
Thursday, the persistence paid off for those seeking capital punishment.
Outside, members of Samuels’ family wept in each other’s arms.
“I understand the death penalty cannot be automatic,” Tammy Samuels read from a prepared statement through tears. “But in my opinion the killing of law enforcement officers is a heinous crime and deserves the most severe punishment possible.”
Judge Ward has to approve the verdict during a hearing he scheduled for Jan. 23.
Violent past
Cheever was running a meth lab in the secluded house in Hilltop, where he shot Samuels to death as the sheriff was trying to serve arrest warrants.
Cheever had absconded from his parole. He had spent more than three years in prison for attempted aggravated robbery of a Eureka store, a crime where the violence came back to haunt him at his capital murder trial.
One of the reasons the state gave the jury to consider death was Cheever’s violent past, when he beat a 65-year-old store clerk during the botched robbery in 2000.
The day before the sentence, the family spoke in detail about their family’s drug abuse in an effort to convince the jury to spare Cheever’s life. They talked of how Cheever’s mother and stepfather used drugs in front of him and even introduced him to marijuana as early as middle school.
Public defender Ron Evans urged the jury not to discount the role Cheever’s upbringing played in molding a murderer.
“We spend a lot of time talking about family values in this country,” Evans said. “Why is it so hard to imagine this man, if he grows up with no family values, that we’re here because he’s come to a bad end?”
Evans urged that the jury give Cheever life without parole.
An apology
Also Thursday, Cheever took the stand for a second time to say he was sorry for what happened, and that he had changed since he had gotten out of the grip of his meth abuse.
“I feel like a piece of crap,” Cheever said from the stand. “I’m sorry.
“I’d do anything to take it back. You say sorry, and it’s like when you bump into someone’s car, you say, ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ This is not like that.”
But prosecutor Lanny Welch, an assistant U.S. attorney, told the jury that Cheever’s remorse was empty.
Welch pointed to four other law enforcement officers who took fire from Cheever that morning. The jury had convicted him earlier in the week of the attempted capital murders of two of Samuels’ deputies and two state troopers who went in as part of a team to arrest Cheever after an hours-long standoff.
“He has never responded remorsefully for attempting to kill four other men that day,” Welch said. “Consider that when you consider his remorse for Sheriff Samuels.”
Prosecutors had dismissed Cheever’s claims that he shot Samuels because he was high on meth that morning as the belated claims of a man trying to escape his own death.
They used Cheever’s own words in a letter from jail after his arrest, saying he’d be “an outlaw until they bury me,” to show he glamorized crime.
Cheever idolized outlaws such as Billy the Kid and John Dillinger, prosecutors said.
Cheever had tattooed teardrops below his right eye in memory of his drug dealer, who was shot to death during a sour deal in Emporia, testimony during his trial showed.
“His only teardrops are the tattoos under his eye,” Welch told the jury.
For complete coverage of the Cheever case, see The Wichita Eagle.
kansasjayhawks (anonymous) says...
I hope the family can finally try to move on. God Bless all of you and please know Matt Samuels will never be forgotten. I hope Scott Cheever knows the impact he has had on their lives. He took the life of a good man.
November 2, 2007 at 4:24 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )