PORT ANGELES — While lawyers for convicted Sequim double-murderer Darold Ray Stenson prepare to appeal last week’s Thurston County Superior Court ruling that lethal injection is not cruel and unusual punishment, a separate legal battle is playing out in Clallam County Superior Court.
Judge Ken Williams will decide whether to lift a stay of execution that was based on new DNA evidence July 24 at 10:30 a.m.
Special Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Pamela Loginsky on June 26 renewed a motion to terminate the stay of execution Stenson received just days before his scheduled Dec. 3 execution at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla.
A formal motion to terminate the stay of execution was filed June 9 in Clallam County Superior Court.
Separate stays of execution– one in Clallam County and one in U.S. District Court — were granted in late November.
The execution was canceled Dec. 1.
The state Supreme Court later upheld the Clallam County decision.
Williams granted the Clallam County stay of execution when a new witness, Robert Shinn, stepped forward claiming Stenson was not guilty and had been framed.
Thirteen items — including clothes, a coffee cup, bullets, cartridges and a revolver — were sent to the state crime lab for testing.
Williams on June 26 granted defense attorney Robert Gombiner’s request for a continuance. Gombiner said defense experts needed to review the DNA results.
Stenson, 56, was convicted in 1994 of fatally shooting his wife and business partner at his exotic bird farm outside of Sequim.
The legal team for Stenson and two other death row inmates who filed the appeal to the state Court of Appeals — Cal Coburn Brown, who tortured and killed a Burien woman; and Jonathan Gentry, who killed a 12-year-old girl in Kitsap County — also will ask the state Supreme Court to review last week’s Thurston County ruling.
Williams in November said that further DNA testing will be more likely to inculpate Stenson than exonerate him.
Stenson has maintained his innocence throughout the years.
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Reporter Rob Ollikainen can be reached at 360-417-3537 or at rob.ollikainen@peninsuladailynews.com.
