Dana December Smith had argued that he deserved a new trial because a serial killer on death row in Texas later confessed to killing 63-year-old Margaret McClain and her 36-year-old daughter, Pamela Castaneda. The women were found stabbed to death in their Leewood home in September 1991.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- A West Logan man serving two life sentences for a brutal double murder in 1991 will stay in prison because the state Supreme Court denied his appeal for a new trial last week.
Dana December Smith, 43, had argued that he deserved a new trial because a serial killer on death row in Texas later confessed to killing 63-year-old Margaret McClain and her 36-year-old daughter, Pamela Castaneda. The women were found stabbed to death in their Leewood home in September 1991.
A Kanawha County jury convicted Smith of two counts of felony murder after a five-week trial in 1992. The jury's verdict came without a recommendation of mercy, meaning Smith will spend the rest of his life in prison.
In a 38-page opinion delivered by Justice Robin Davis, the court rejected Smith's contention that serial killer Tommy Lynn Sells' confession to the murders, which he later recanted, would have resulted in a different outcome in Smith's case.
"Mr. Sells' confession clearly shows that he provided blatant 'incorrect' information about the crime scene," Davis wrote. "The fact that two of Mr. Sells' incorrect statements can be traced to improperly identified trial exhibits indicates that it is very plausible that someone supplied Mr. Sells with information about the murders."
Prosecutors argued that Sells cobbled together enough information about the Leewood murders from media accounts and information fed to him to give a plausible version of events. But several telling mistakes demonstrated that he did not have firsthand knowledge of the crime scene, they maintained.
First, Sells described staying in the attic of the victims' home, which he said had a bedroom and a bathroom, the opinion states. In fact, the attic had no bathroom and only a mattress. But a photo of the downstairs entered as evidence in Smith's trial - but wrongly labeled as the upstairs - depicted the layout described by Sells, according to the opinion.
Sells also said there was a brown couch with a black afghan on it in the victims' home, which also wasn't true, Davis wrote. A photo of a brown couch with a black afghan was part of the evidence at trial, but it showed someone else's house.
"[T]he State argues that because of the strength of the evidence against Mr. Smith, Mr. Sells' implausible confession would not bring about a different result at a new trial. We agree," the opinion concluded.
The evidence against Smith included his own admission during his trial that he had stolen the victims' car. (Smith maintained he had never gone inside the house, but the car had not been hotwired, and there was testimony that a set of keys was kept on a nail inside the house, Davis noted.)
In addition, Smith was seen just after the murders wearing a blood-stained shirt belonging to Castaneda, the opinion states. DNA tests concluded that the stains included Castaneda's blood.
In February 2006, Sells wrote a letter recanting his earlier confession to the murders, in which he explained that he had been asked to accept responsibility for the West Virginia murders because he was already on death row and couldn't face any additional punishment.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- A West Logan man serving two life sentences for a brutal double murder in 1991 will stay in prison because the state Supreme Court denied his appeal for a new trial last week.
Dana December Smith, 43, had argued that he deserved a new trial because a serial killer on death row in Texas later confessed to killing 63-year-old Margaret McClain and her 36-year-old daughter, Pamela Castaneda. The women were found stabbed to death in their Leewood home in September 1991.
A Kanawha County jury convicted Smith of two counts of felony murder after a five-week trial in 1992. The jury's verdict came without a recommendation of mercy, meaning Smith will spend the rest of his life in prison.
In a 38-page opinion delivered by Justice Robin Davis, the court rejected Smith's contention that serial killer Tommy Lynn Sells' confession to the murders, which he later recanted, would have resulted in a different outcome in Smith's case.
"Mr. Sells' confession clearly shows that he provided blatant 'incorrect' information about the crime scene," Davis wrote. "The fact that two of Mr. Sells' incorrect statements can be traced to improperly identified trial exhibits indicates that it is very plausible that someone supplied Mr. Sells with information about the murders."
Prosecutors argued that Sells cobbled together enough information about the Leewood murders from media accounts and information fed to him to give a plausible version of events. But several telling mistakes demonstrated that he did not have firsthand knowledge of the crime scene, they maintained.
First, Sells described staying in the attic of the victims' home, which he said had a bedroom and a bathroom, the opinion states. In fact, the attic had no bathroom and only a mattress. But a photo of the downstairs entered as evidence in Smith's trial - but wrongly labeled as the upstairs - depicted the layout described by Sells, according to the opinion.
Sells also said there was a brown couch with a black afghan on it in the victims' home, which also wasn't true, Davis wrote. A photo of a brown couch with a black afghan was part of the evidence at trial, but it showed someone else's house.
"[T]he State argues that because of the strength of the evidence against Mr. Smith, Mr. Sells' implausible confession would not bring about a different result at a new trial. We agree," the opinion concluded.
The evidence against Smith included his own admission during his trial that he had stolen the victims' car. (Smith maintained he had never gone inside the house, but the car had not been hotwired, and there was testimony that a set of keys was kept on a nail inside the house, Davis noted.)
In addition, Smith was seen just after the murders wearing a blood-stained shirt belonging to Castaneda, the opinion states. DNA tests concluded that the stains included Castaneda's blood.
In February 2006, Sells wrote a letter recanting his earlier confession to the murders, in which he explained that he had been asked to accept responsibility for the West Virginia murders because he was already on death row and couldn't face any additional punishment.
"At this time I want to recant my confession," Sells wrote. "I did not kill these women. I never stayed at their house, I don't know where they lived and never met them."
In his appeal, Smith wrote that the circuit court erred by considering Sells' letter, which he called "unauthenticated." But the justices said Kanawha Circuit Judge Jennifer Bailey was within her discretion, in part because Smith had never demonstrated that Sells' letter was anything other than what it purported to be.
In a March 2007 phone interview with the Gazette, Diane Fanning, the author of "Through the Window: The Terrifying True Story of Cross-Country Killer Tommy Lynn Sells," said she did not include the West Virginia murders in her 2003 book because she didn't believe Sells was responsible.
"[Sells] told me that though there are many people sitting in jails for crimes he committed, in that case they had the right person behind bars," she said. "While I was writing the book, I talked to him a number of times. He said he was yanking their chain [about the West Virginia murders]."
Sells and Smith were in the same prison in West Virginia in the 1990s, but there is no evidence that the two men ever had any direct contact.
"Sells told me they were not in the same cell, they were in the same cell block," Fanning said. "So I think that's very possible, and that's what Sells told me, that Smith told him about [the Leewood murders]. He said he didn't like Smith, he said he was a piece of [crap]."
Fanning said she was not surprised that Sells was able to fool investigators into believing he had firsthand knowledge of the West Virginia case.
"Whenever you're dealing with manipulative cons, they can be so credible sometimes," she said.
Reach Andrew Clevenger at
acleven...@wvgazette.com
or 304-348-1723.
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