Summary
The Mississippi Supreme Court affirmed Stephen Elliot Powers’s capital murder conviction and death sentence for the murder of Elizabeth Lafferty. The court held that the evidence supported the attempted-rape aggravating offense and rejected Powers’s claims of ineffective assistance of counsel concerning suppression, jury selection, and trial strategy.
Topics
Practice areas
Questions Presented
- Whether the evidence was legally sufficient to support the attempted-rape offense underlying the capital-murder conviction.
- Whether the trial court properly refused proposed circumstantial-evidence jury instructions concerning attempted rape.
- Whether trial counsel was ineffective during the suppression hearing and in litigating the admissibility and voluntariness of Powers's statements.
- Whether trial counsel was ineffective for failing to raise a Batson challenge during jury selection.
- Whether trial counsel was ineffective in failing to present a coherent defense, seek reduction of the charge, request lesser-offense instructions, or present additional sentencing-phase mitigation.
- Whether the death sentence was supported by the statutory aggravating circumstances and was neither arbitrary nor disproportionate.
Holdings
- The evidence was sufficient for the jury to find that Powers attempted to commit rape while murdering Lafferty, thereby supporting the capital-murder conviction.
- The trial court properly refused a circumstantial-evidence instruction because the case was not purely circumstantial.
- Trial counsel was not ineffective in litigating suppression of Powers's statements.
- Trial counsel was not ineffective for failing to raise a Batson challenge because the record did not establish a viable challenge and reflected race-neutral reasons for the State's strikes.
- Powers failed to prove ineffective assistance based on counsel's defense strategy, failure to seek reduction of the charge, failure to request a manslaughter instruction, or sentencing-phase investigation and advocacy.
- The death sentence was not imposed under an arbitrary factor, was supported by the statutory aggravating circumstances, and was neither excessive nor disproportionate.
Key quotations
“A circumstantial evidence case is one in which there is neither an eyewitness nor a confession.” (27)
“the benchmark [ ] must be whether counsel’s conduct so undermined the proper functioning of the adversarial process that the trial cannot be relied on as having produced a just result.” (28)
“CONVICTION OF CAPITAL MURDER AND SENTENCE OF DEATH BY LETHAL INJECTION, AFFIRMED.” (36)
Factual background
Elizabeth Lafferty was found dead in her home after being shot five times in the head with a .22-caliber firearm. Her body was nude from the waist down, with her shorts around an ankle and injuries consistent with defensive posturing. Powers was the last person seen with Lafferty and possessed a .22-caliber gun; after receiving Miranda warnings and signing a waiver, he led police to the weapon and confessed to shooting Lafferty. The jury found him guilty of capital murder predicated on attempted rape and found the relevant death-penalty aggravating circumstances.
Procedural history
Powers was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death in the Forrest County Circuit Court for murdering Elizabeth Lafferty, with attempted rape as the underlying felony. The trial court denied his post-trial motion. On direct appeal, Powers challenged the sufficiency of the attempted-rape evidence and asserted multiple ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claims. The Mississippi Supreme Court affirmed both the conviction and sentence.