YAKIMA — Federal and state judges have indefinitely delayed the execution of Darold Stenson for the 1993 shooting deaths of his wife and a business partner near Sequim.
The separate stays were issued today by judges in federal court in Yakima and in Clallam County Superior Court.
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Earlier story:
Catholic bishops want Gregoire to halt Sequim man’s execution
SEATTLE — The state’s Roman Catholic bishops are asking Gov. Chris Gregoire to commute the death sentence of Sequim murderer Darold Ray Stenson, due to be executed Dec. 3.
The three bishops, representing Catholic dioceses in Seattle, Spokane and Yakima, are asking that Stenson instead receive life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
Stenson, 55, is set to be executed by lethal injection in the Walla Walla state prison.
He was convicted in Clallam County of aggravated murder for the 1993 shooting deaths of his wife and a business partner while his three young children slept nearby in the house of his Dungeness Valley exotic-bird farm.
Gregoire: no comment
Seattle Archbishop Alex Brunett, Spokane Bishop William Skylstad, and Yakima Bishop Carlos Sevilla made the request in a letter to Gregoire, who is Roman Catholic, last Friday.
Gregoire’s spokesman, Pearse Edwards, said Monday that the governor was reserving comment until she reviews the letter.
The bishops wrote that while they understand the responsibility of the state to punish Stenson, “there remains no moral justification for imposing a sentence of death.”
“Violence begets violence both in our hearts and in our actions,” they wrote.
“By continuing the tradition of responding to killing with state-sanctioned killing, we rob ourselves of moral consistency and perpetuate that which we seek to sanction.”
Stenson would be the first inmate put to death since 2001 if none of his pending appeals is granted.
Attorneys for Stenson have filed an appeal for a stay with the state Supreme Court, after motions were denied in Clallam County Superior Court last Friday.
Clallam County Superior Court Judge Kenneth Williams ruled that he doesn’t have the authority to grant a stay of execution needed to conduct additional the DNA testing requested by Stenson’s Seattle lawyers, Robert Gombiner and Sheryl McCloud, who appeared in court in Port Angeles on Friday.
Stenson has long claimed he didn’t commit the murders, and is one of just two inmates in recent years to continue to appeal his death sentence.
Business partner
When Stenson called authorities in 1993 to report the deaths, he suggested that his business partner, Frank Hoerner, had killed Denise Stenson and then shot himself in another room.
Prosecutors have said Stenson, struggling financially and in dire business straits, shot the two in order to collect $400,000 in life insurance.
A federal appeals court lifted a stay last month, and prison officials are preparing for the execution to go forward as scheduled. Several walkthroughs have already been conducted, with another scheduled this week.
Because he declined to choose between lethal injection and hanging, Stenson would be killed by lethal injection if the execution goes forward as planned.
Since 1904, 77 men have been executed in Washington, the last being James Elledge in August 2001.
No woman has ever been sentenced to death in the state.
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The Associated Press contributed to this report.
