As potential jurors waited, events were unfolding

An estimated 100 people were in Custer County Courtroom No. 1 prepared to do their duty Tuesday before a surprise deal between double murderer Jeremy Hardy and prosecutors made it unnecessary for them to stick around.
Most of the hundred were present at 8:30 a.m., when they had been asked to be there as potential jurors to help decide whether Hardy was guilty of murdering Arapaho father Kent Powell and Lone Wolf grandmother Billie Jean West. If their decision had been yes, they also would have had to decide whether he should be sentenced to die for his crimes.
But his decision to plead guilty, and the decisions of the victims’ families to accept it, made it possible for them to go home early and for whoever would have sat on the jury not to go through a laborious trial that had the potential of lasting for weeks.
At 9:10 a.m. Tuesday, County Court Clerk Staci Hunter stepped into the courtroom, which had just about every seat filled as well as standers in all the vacant spots along both the north and south walls. Mrs. Hunter announced that she was going to draw 30 names and those people should report to Courtroom No. 2, across the hall and down a little way.
Those whose names weren’t drawn stayed behind, wondering if the missing 30 were going to get first crack at being the ones to decide Hardy’s fate.
They shouldn’t have been concerned. Unknown to most or all of them, two trials were scheduled to start that morning. The other was a child custody issue, and the lucky 30 were going to decide it.
That left about 70 still in the big courtroom wondering what was going on, but most of the standers at least now had seats.
Those left behind just sat, and sat some more, for about 40 minutes. Then at 9:50 Mrs. Hunter returned and told them they could leave but to be back at 1:30 p.m.
“There are some things to take care of,” was the only explanation she gave.
“Somebody said ya’ll were supposed to feed us,” cracked one of the 70.
“That’s why we’re letting you go,” cracked back Hunter with a smile, essentially telling them they could scrub up lunch on their own.
But before lunchtime came, the trial principals – Hardy, his lawyers and those prosecuting him – showed up in the courtroom. Then came the surprise revelation that a deal had been worked and there would be no trial at all. He was pleading guilty.
So he did, thereby avoiding the possibility of the death penalty but also assuring that the rest of his life would be spent behind bars due to a couple of life-in-prison-without-parole sentences for the murders of Powell and Mrs. West.
If the trial had gone on, several members of both families were ready to give victim impact statements, presumably about how the murders of their loved ones had affected their families. Those statements could have been given in Stage 2 of the trial, which would have occurred if Hardy had been convicted of either murder and the jury had found him guilty of any of three “extenuating circumstances” alleged by prosecutors.
They were that he had knowingly created a great risk of death to more than one person; that either or both of the murders was especially heinous, atrocious or cruel; and that there was a possibility he would commit additional acts of violence which would make him a continuing threat to society if he were allowed to live.
In one of his last big decisions before the trial was scheduled to start, Judge Haught had ruled that members of the Powell and West families were entitled to make victim impact statements, either in writing or orally. That was in response to a request by Hardy’s attorneys asking the judge to declare that such statements were “fundamentally unfair” to their client and asking him to bar them.
In a response to that request filed Dec. 21, Custer County District Attorney Angela Marsee said Oklahoma Statute Paragraph 21-142 A-8 “directs this court in mandatory terms, to allow each member of a victim’s family who wishes to speak a chance to be heard by the sentencer.”
She also said, “The statute says that a family member has an absolute right to appear and be heard.”
If the member merely presented a written statement, he or she could not be cross-examined by the defendant’s lawyers, said her response, but if the statement were given orally before a judge or jury, she said the speaker could be cross-examined. If given in written form, she said the statement was to be included in its entirety in the court record.
Among those she listed who had indicated they wished to offer victim impact statements were Billie Jean West’s husband, daughters and granddaughters, and Kent Powell’s wife, mother, sons and sister.
Those who had either expressed their desire to speak or submitted written statements at the time Marsee was responding to the motion were Katie Elizondo, Sheila Elizondo, Laura Carlucci, Brooke Carlucci, Tamara Powell, Holden Powell, Hudson Powell, Sandy Powell and Deborah Crump. Ronnie West also was intending to submit a statement prior to the deadline of Dec. 22, 2017, for doing so.
One person from each of the two families did in fact give a victim impact statement Tuesday even though the sentence had already been decided.