Arkansas News Bureau
LITTLE ROCK — The state Supreme Court today denied a request to reconsider its decision to overturn the capital murder and kidnapping convictions of a Desha County man in the slaying of a Pine Bluff teenager.
In a split decision, the court denied a petition by the state attorney general’s office for a rehearing in the case of Kenneth Ray Osburn, who was sentenced to life without parole in the 2006 strangulation death of 17-year-old Casey Crowder.
The Supreme Court overturned Osburn’s conviction in June.
Gabe Holmstrom, a spokesman for Attorney General Dustin McDaniel, said today the attorney general’s office will confer with the prosecuting attorney in the case about the prospects of a new trial for Osburn.
“We’re also going to give serious consideration to asking the U.S. Supreme Court to consider the case,” Holmstrom said.
Osburn, a trucker from the McGehee area, confessed to investigators that he killed the Watson Chapel High School senior, whose body was found beside U.S. 65 in Dumas on Aug. 27, 2006, with a zip-tie around her neck. The confession was admitted as evidence at Osburn’s trial, over his lawyer’s objections.
In a majority opinion written by Justice Paul Danielson, the Supreme Court said in June that while state police investigators were questioning Osburn he asked for an attorney, but the investigators continued to interrogate him and coerced a confession from him by threatening to arrest his daughter.
Justices Robert Brown and Jim Gunter dissented in that opinion. Brown wrote that it was “a real stretch” to find that Osburn could not have changed his mind and decided to talk to investigators without an attorney.
Chief Justice Jim Hannah agreed with the majority that the confession should not have been admitted at Osburn’s trial but said he also believed the prosecution should not have been allowed to tell jurors about an assault that occurred 27 years earlier.
The Supreme Court rejected the attorney general’s petition today without comment. Brown, Gunter and Hannah dissented, also without comment.
