Missouri: Jury hung in sentencing of former Dent County deputy found guilty of two murders

A jury that found a former Dent County sheriff's deputy and state correctional officer guilty of murdering his ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend couldn't decide Saturday whether he should be put to death for his crimes - a decision a judge must now make.

On Thursday, the jury found Marvin Rice guilty of 1st-degree murder in the shooting of Annette Durham, 32, and 2nd-degree murder in the shooting of Steven Strotkamp, 39.

During the penalty phase of the trial on Friday, the jury decided Rice should serve a life sentence for the 2nd-degree murder charge. The jury had a choice between life without the possibility of probation or parole or death on the 1st-degree murder charge. The jury voted 11 to 1 in favor of the death penalty, but the decision had to be unanimous.

Now the decision as to whether Rice will spend his life in prison or be sent to death row rests with Judge Kelly Parker, who has set a punishment hearing for Oct. 6.

The fatal shootings in 2011 sprang from a custody dispute between Rice and Durham over their son.

Rice had an affair with Durham while he was a Dent County sheriff's deputy. Durham, who struggled with drug addiction, had been in and out of jail several times and their son was born in 2010 while she was serving a prison sentence.

Rice and his wife took custody, but no formal agreement was in place, Dent County Prosecuting Attorney Andrew Curley told jurors in his opening statement Monday.

When Durham got out of prison in 2011 after another short stay, she was determined to get her life together and establish a relationship with her son, Curley said. Rice initially allowed her only brief visits supervised by him.

But on Dec. 10, 2011, she was allowed an unsupervised visit and decided that she wanted to keep her son overnight, Curley said.

When Rice found out, he went to the house Durham shared with Strotkamp outside of Salem.

He shot both with a .40-caliber pistol, took his son and then gave the boy to his wife before leading police on a high-speed chase that ended in a shootout in a Jefferson City hotel during a Christmas party, Curley said.

Curley said Monday that Strotkamp was able to identify Rice as his killer before he died. Durham's daughter also testified that she heard loud noises that she later learned were gunshots before seeing Rice with a pistol. He took his son and left without saying a word, she told jurors. She saw the 2 bodies before running for help.

Public defender Charles Hoskins told jurors that Rice "snapped" when Durham told him, "You're never seeing (your son) again, and neither is your family."

He said Rice was under "extreme emotional distress" at the time and that a pituitary tumor and the 17 medications he was taking affected his impulse control and made him misinterpret reality in a paranoid manner.

Source: St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 14, 2017

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