SALEM, Ore. (AP) - Lawyers for a man convicted of planting a bomb that killed two Oregon police officers in 2008 told the state Supreme Court on Thursday that his death sentence should be overturned.
The lawyers for Bruce Turnidge say the Marion County trial judge made two dozen errors in handling the case.
Turnidge was convicted along with his son, Joshua Turnidge, of building and planting the bomb at a bank in Woodburn.
All Oregon death penalty cases are automatically reviewed by the Supreme Court. No hearing has been scheduled in Joshua Turnidge’s case.
In the hearing Thursday, the justices focused on one question: Does it matter that there was no evidence the Turnidges themselves attempted to detonate the bomb?
Prosecutors argue the bomb was detonated by a stray radio wave. Turnidge’s lawyers say it went off because an Oregon State Police bomb technician hit it with a hammer, thinking it was fake.
“They didn’t do anything to set the bomb off,” said W. Keith Goody, one of Bruce Turnidge’s lawyers. “It was set off for other reasons.”
Because there’s no evidence that the defendants “personally” caused the blast, Goody argued, they couldn’t be convicted under the felony murder law that formed the basis for four of the 10 counts against them. If those four counts are excluded, the case must be sent back to the trial court for a new sentencing hearing, he argued.
A lawyer for the state disagreed, saying building and placing the bomb met the legal standard for a felony murder conviction.
“We have a defendant who created the murder weapon and armed the murder weapon and took the actions necessary to lure the officers to the murder weapon,” said Assistant Attorney General Susan Howe. “It was not necessary to prove how the weapon detonated.”
Turnidge’s lawyers also argued that Judge Thomas Hart improperly excluded three potential jurors and destroyed questionnaires they filled out. The lawyers also say the judge should not have allowed testimony about the Turnidges’ anti-government views and improperly excluded information from the jury instructions.
The lawyers also objected to the prosecutor saying the defendants should receive a death sentence so they would be excluded from the general inmate population and prevented from spreading opinions critical of police.
“It is disturbing when a prosecutor gets up and talks about what he considers to be a pernicious political philosophy … and then says the only way you can silence the speech is by killing the defendant,” Goody said. “That’s a little over the top.”
The blast killed state police bomb technician William Hakim and Woodburn Police Lt. Tom Tennant. Woodburn’s police chief, Scott Russell, lost a leg, and a bank employee was wounded.
Bruce Turnidge’s brother, Pat Turnidge, told reporters outside the courthouse Thursday that Bruce and Joshua Turnidge maintain their innocence.
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