One of Colorado’s three death-row inmates on Thursday lost his bid to toss out his attempted first-degree murder conviction.
In December, Robert Ray, 28, asked a three-judge panel of the Colorado Court of Appeals in a case involving the fatal shooting of Gregory Vann in an Aurora park on July 4, 2004. Ray was convicted of attempted first-degree murder in that case.
This appeal did not challenge the guilty verdict that sent him to death row in 2009.
Ray was convicted and for orchestrating the June 20, 2005 killings of Javad Marshall-Fields and his fiancee, Vivian Wolfe, both 22. Marshall-Fields and Wolfe were shot and killed by Ray’s friend, Sir Mario Owens, just before Marshall-Fields was scheduled to testify against Ray in the trial for Vann’s death.
Marshall-Fields was the son of state Rep. Rhonda Fields.
Prosecutors included the park shooting as one of the aggravating factors for why Ray should be sentenced to death.
In December, Ray’s attorney, Gail Johnson, argued that Ray did not get a fair trial before the jury convicted him of attempted murder. Johnson argued that jurors had inappropriate access to a DVD recording of an interview with one of the witnesses who saw the park shooting.
The judge, Johnson argued, erred when he ruled the jurors could review the DVD as many times as they wanted.
But in its non-published ruling, the appeals court called the argument, “logically inconsistent.”
The judges also rejected Johnson’s argument that the trial court improperly ignored a note from one juror the morning before a verdict was reached. The juror wrote that the jury could not reach a verdict without violating his belief in justice.
Judges, both in December and in their ruling, pointed out that at the time the note was received, defense attorneys objected to removing the juror.
“We conclude that defense counsel invited the alleged error and that, in any event, there was no plain error,” the judges wrote.
for shooting and killing Marshall-Fields and Wolfe. He also is appealing his case.
