A Bellingham man’s murder conviction has been overturned by the state Court of Appeals for a second time on the grounds that the evidence didn’t prove the killing was premeditated.
This time the case can’t go to trial again, the appeals court ruled Monday, Oct. 17...
At the first trial in August 2009, a jail cellmate testified that Hummel confided that he had “helped Alice get to a better place” by mixing ground up pills with apple cider and giving it to her to drink...
the case went to another trial, and the girls, now grown up, were called in to testify again. This time the state did not bring the “jailhouse snitch” witness to trial, because his testimony did not seem to add much, and the first jury did not put much stock in his testimony, said Dave McEachran, the prosecutor. McEachran does not believe that leaving that witness out of the second trial had any adverse effect on the case...
“The evidence that Hummel disposed of her body, concealed her death, and fraudulently obtained her disability checks after she died is evidence of guilt,” the appellate judges wrote, “but does not prove premeditation.”
At trial McEachran argued that Hummel must have lured his wife out of the house, because a 200-pound, 5-foot-10 man, like Hummel, could not have lifted his wife’s 200- to 250-pound body into his van. This would suggest that Hummel must have planned her death for at least a moment, all that is needed to count as premeditation.
The appeals court ruling notes that Hummel could have found a way, for example, by wrapping her body in plastic and dragging her to the van, as Hummel claimed he had done to cover up the suicide...
During the second trial Angela Anderson, the public defender, offered the jury a scenario that would, in theory, suggest the murder wasn’t premeditated: Mom waits several days to confront Hummel about the molestation, then confronts him on the day she disappears.
“Let’s assume this,” Anderson argued, “in a rage (Hummel) kills her right then and there, and when the kids come home, mom is gone. If that is the way it happened, that’s murder in the second degree, because there’s no premeditation.”
Murder in the second degree, however, had been taken off the table in an agreement before the second trial – a move that ended up working out for the defense, Anderson said Tuesday.
McEachran said he did not ask the jury to consider convicting him of what is known as a “lesser included offense,” i.e., murder in the second degree, because the first Court of Appeals ruling agreed there was evidence to prove murder in the first degree. McEachran called it “bizarre” that a second group of judges, on the same court, disagreed and found there wasn’t enough evidence to prove premeditation.
So as a result the Court of Appeals ruled that, because the prosecutor didn’t instruct the jury to consider the lesser crime, the judgment could not simply be reduced to murder in the second degree.
“Reversal for insufficient evidence is ‘equivalent to an acquittal,’ and bars retrial for the same offense,” reads the appellate court’s ruling, in a paragraph citing the U.S. Supreme Court case Burks v. United States...
The prosecutor plans to appeal to the state’s highest court. If the Supreme Court upholds the ruling, the case will be sent back to Whatcom County, and dismissed with prejudice. That means the defendant would be a free man, and the case couldn’t be taken to trial a third time.
In the meantime, Hummel will await the result of that appeal behind bars at a state prison in Monroe.