CADP Board Member Has Success in Federal Death Case
Board member and former CADP president Vicki Mandell-King was recently part of a team winning a federal death penalty appeal.
Bountaem Chanthadara was accused, along with several other Vietnamese and Laotian young men, of murdering Barbara Sun, the owner of the Mandarin Restaurant in Wichita, Kansas, after robbing the restaurant of a few hundred dollars.
Gary Peterson, an attorney in private practice who specializes in death penalty litigation, represented Chanthadara at trial, and requested that Mandell-King work with him on the appeal to the Tenth Circuit.
During the trial, at a hearing outside the presence of the jury, the trial judge characterized Chanthadara's alternate suspect defense as "a smokescreen." Although this became a headline in the Wichita paper seen by several of the jurors, the judge refused to declare a mistrial.
In the appeal, the Tenth Circuit held that, while this was in error, it was harmless for purposes of the guilt phase. However, the circuit held the error was not harmless for purposes of the death sentence. In addition the circuit held the evidence was insufficient to prove that Barbara Sun was murdered for pecuniary gain, and also held that jurors cannot be stricken for views on the death penalty based on written answers to a questionnaire.
The case was remanded for a new death penalty phase.
Coloradans Against the Death Penalty Newsletter -- Winter 2000
See the Web site's News section for more articles and information about the death penalty.
