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SALT LAKE CITY — The Utah Supreme Court has denied an appeal for death row inmate Troy Michael Kell for the fourth time.
Kell, 55, was convicted of aggravated murder, a capital offense, after brutally stabbing and killing a fellow inmate in 1994 while serving a life sentence for murder. He was sentenced to death, and the Utah Supreme Court affirmed his conviction and sentence for the first time in 2002.
The murder that led to Kell's death sentence was recorded on video and shows Kell stabbing Lonnie Blackmon 67 times, causing him to bleed to death.
Kell is a "known white supremacist," and has a history of altercations that are related to race — including this one, according to the opinion released last week.
The opinion, written by Chief Justice Matthew Durrant, said this is the fourth time Kell's case has come before the state's high court, after they affirmed district court decisions to deny him relief in 2002, 2008 and 2012.
Kell's latest appeal argued that attorneys interviewing jurors from his trial years later, in 2012, discovered that three jurors remembered communicating with the judge during sentencing deliberations without attorneys or Kell present. One of them remembered the judge telling them it was Kell's burden to convince them his life should be spared.
Durrant said 6th District Judge Wallace A. Lee's denial of his petition is correct, based on time and procedural limitations.
"There is a glaring problem with Kell's petition. His attorneys discovered this new evidence in 2012, yet Kell did not file his petition in state court until 2018, over five years later," the opinion said.
It agreed with prosecutors' arguments that the petition does not overcome the delay in bringing the claim. The decision said the delay "reflects the fact that, in this case, no such violation occurred."
The opinion said Kell did not show that the dismissal of a claim he took five years to bring to the court violates his rights.
Kell and four of the other six men on Utah's death row filed a lawsuit claiming the state's capital punishment is cruel and unusual punishment, but that lawsuit was dismissed by 3rd District Judge Coral Sanchez on Dec. 22.
"Plaintiffs have offered no legal precedent or historical facts to support their interpretation of the cruel and unusual punishments clause: that a method of execution must result in instantaneous death," the ruling states.
Utah's current default method of administering the death penalty is by lethal injection. But if the right cocktail of drugs isn't available, the state allows for a person to be put to death by firing squad.
