You’re right, but imoo there’s much more to pull from including some that transpired today.
State (allegedly) allowing victim impact statements submitted to ore-sentence report containing statements outside the scope of what the statute allows/not filing any Objections except for the 2 smaller items they brought up today, the Court admitting to using some “aggravating factors” that quite literally are not written into the aggravating factors within the applicable Statutes, and that’s all before you include things like mentioning pending charges, where one is presumed innocent, in another jurisdiction and state, as part of the State’s sentencing recommendation. Yes it’s true she’s facing serious charges elsewhere, but it’s also true that those should likely not come up whatsoever in their recommendation because they aren’t “this” case.
All of those things - individually or collectively - I’ve seen included on other appeals. Mrs. Smith for the prosecution has had a homicide conviction overturned because she made statements that were similar to what Mr. Wood said today (where he said that the community would be shown that the lives lost have “no value” if the sentence was “anything less” than their recommendation. Smith made statements like that in her previous case and higher Court found that to be very inappropriate and not based in the law )
Sorry to sound like a Debbie Downer here, I just would hate to see anything handed to them for inclusion on an appeal so freely by the State, and this is long before they even could get to including things that happened at trial. Thankfully she’s going away for life, but even unsuccessful appeals do not = in my opinion, any less pain and suffering for the victims’ families.
