DES MOINES (AP) — The man convicted of killing former Aplington-Parkersburg football coach Ed Thomas claims he deserves a new trial because the judge in his original trial two years ago presented the jury with erroneous instructions.
Mark Becker’s attorney argued before the Iowa Supreme Court on Thursday that the written instructions the jury received on mental insanity were not adequate.
Becker, 26, shot and killed Thomas while the popular long-time coach was supervising a weight training session for a few dozen high school athletes on June 24, 2009. A jury determined Becker was capable of understanding the nature and consequences of his actions and knew right from wrong when he shot Thomas. He was sentenced to life in prison.
One of the instructions to jurors defined insanity as “lacking sufficient mental capacity.” Becker’s defense lawyers had asked the trial judge to use language from the Iowa Code — “diseased or deranged condition of mind” — but the judge refused.
The Des Moines Register (http://dmreg.co/H4LfDu) reports that Assistant Appellate Defender Martha Lucey argued the two are not synonymous and the court instructions confused the jury. She also claimed the term "mental capacity" is too broadly defined to be of any use to jurors.
She said a jury member could have looked at whether Becker had the mental capacity to carry out tasks such as driving a car or procuring a gun and assumed he had the capacity to tell right from wrong, without considering the mental illness.
“Is it your position that he had the mental capacity to know right from wrong but his mental illness so distorted it as to render him insane?” asked Justice Brent Appel.
Lucey countered the term shouldn’t have been used at all.
“Language is really, really important in this case in general,” Lucey said.
Iowa Assistant Attorney General Darrel Mullins argued for the state that mental capacity has long been used by trial courts and is a standard jury instruction. He also pointed out that mental capacity was an umbrella term that included mental illness, so the broadness actually worked in Becker’s favor.