Lawyers for Murray Hooper file new appeal as execution date nears
PHOENIX (AP) - Lawyers for an Arizona death row inmate scheduled to be executed on Nov. 16 have filed a new appeal.
Murray Hooper’s attorneys filed another petition for post-conviction relief Monday in Maricopa County Superior Court, saying "newly discovered material facts" have been discovered in the case and the 76-year-old inmate should be entitled to a new trial.
Hooper’s defense team also filed a petition in September requesting post-conviction DNA and other forensic testing.
They said Hooper was convicted and sentenced on unreliable witness testimony, no physical evidence links him to the crime and an analysis of key fingerprint and DNA evidence was scientifically unavailable at the time of his trial.
Murray Hooper (Courtesy: Arizona Department of Correction, Rehabilitation and Reentry)
Hooper and two co-defendants were sentenced to death in 1982 for the murders of William "Pat" Redmond and his mother-in-law, Helen Phelps, during a home robbery in Phoenix on New Year’s Eve 1980.
Redmond’s wife, Marilyn, was shot in the head but recovered.
Lawyers for Hooper said Marilyn Redmond’s description of the assailants changed several times before she identified Hooper, who has maintained his innocence in the double slayings.
"Because there is no physical or forensic evidence placing Mr. Hooper at the scene, or in Arizona, the unreliability of Mrs. Redmond’s identification calls his conviction into question and demands relief," Hooper’s attorneys said in the latest appeal.
The other two men convicted in the case died before their sentences could be carried out.
The Arizona Supreme Court ruled last month that the state can move forward with Hooper’s execution.
He would be the third inmate put to death this year after Arizona recently resumed carrying out executions.
There are 111 inmates on Arizona’s death row and 22 have exhausted their appeals, according to the Attorney General’s Office.