A 43-year-old man who has sat on Alabama’s Death Row for 15 years is getting a new trial.
The Alabama Supreme Court announced in its weekly orders on Friday that Emanuel Aaron Gissendanner, who was convicted of murdering Margaret Snellgrove in 2001 during a robbery and a kidnapping, will receive a new trial.
After Gissendanner’s conviction, his lawyers filed a direct appeal and in 2007, the Dale County judge who sentenced Gissendanner to death granted him a new trial based on claims of ineffective counsel. “In his 70-page order, Judge [Kenneth] Quattlebaum found that Gissendanner's defense counsel were deficient in both the guilt phase and the penalty phase of the trial. The judge found that defense counsel failed to investigate and to prepare for trial. The judge also found that the State had violated [case law] in failing to disclose handwriting samples to the defense,” the state’s highest court noted in its Friday ruling.
Prosecutors appealed the judge’s order granting a new trial, and in 2014 the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals reversed Quattlebaum’s ruling and told the lower court to reinstate Gissendanner’s conviction and sentence.
Today’s ruling from the Alabama Supreme Court overrules the appeals judgement, and orders the lower court to hold a new trial.
Snellgrove was attacked and killed on June 22, 2001, with court records noting her cause of death as severe neck and head injuries. At Gissendanner’s original trial, police said Snellgrove was assaulted in her carport and then taken to a remote area near an abandoned trailer where Gissendanner sometimes stayed. Officers also located the victim’s cell phone, purse, and other belongings in that trailer, trial records show.
Snellgrove’s partially nude body was found in a ditch covered with tree limbs.
The Alabama Supreme Court also announced in its weekly list the denial of rehearing for another death row inmate, Jessie Livell Phillips.
Phillips was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death for the fatal shooting of his wife, Erica Droze Phillips, and their unborn child in Marshall County. It was the first prosecution and conviction under Alabama’s Brody Act, which makes it a homicide to kill an unborn baby in an attack on the mother.
The shooting happened Feb. 27, 2009 at an Alabama 69 car wash in Guntersville. Jessie Phillips became angry because his wife had not changed the wet diaper of their young daughter, court documents state. Records say Phillips then shot his wife in the back of the head, leaving her body lying in one of the car wash bays. The 23-year-old died at a local hospital the next day.
In 2015, the criminal appeals court upheld Jessie Phillips' conviction, but it remanded the case back to the trial court for a resentencing. The next year, Marshall County Circuit Judge Tim Riley again sentenced Jessie Phillips to death. Jessie Phillips appealed to the Alabama Supreme Court in 2017.
Source: al.com, Ivana Hrynkiw, January 4, 2019
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