Hearing nears in Mooney no-parole case

A hearing on motions in the appeal of a 1993 Washita County murder case is currently scheduled for Feb. 7.
The motions were required to be filed by last Friday, but because of the Martin Luther King holiday Monday the Washita County courthouse – presumably along with all others in Oklahoma and probably the nation – was closed.
Jerry Duwayne Mooney, now 43, was convicted in 1995 of beating elderly Canute resident Robert Turley so badly in May of 1993 that he died six months later. Mooney received the death sentence, but it was appealed and overthrown four years later by the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals. He received a new sentence of life in prison without the possi-bility of parole.
It too is being appealed now – the key issue being the defendant’s age at the time of the crime – and it’s the one on which motions will be heard Feb. 7. Mooney was 16 when the fatal injuries were inflicted on Turley, and in some other subsequent cases punishments of life without parole have been overturned because the defendant was under 18 when the crime was committed.
One from this same judicial district, that of Tucker McGee of Weatherford, in fact was overthrown just last year. McGee was 10 days short of his 18th birthday when he shot 16-year-old Jaray Wilson to death in 2012.
Before his retirement earlier this month, Former District Judge Doug Haught set the Feb. 7 hearing date for motions in the Mooney case. Previously he also had ordered that District Attorney Angela Marsee be provided with records from the Oklahoma Department of Corrections regarding Mooney’s conduct and his physical and mental health, as well as his substance abuse treatment, while he’s been in prison. Haught also ordered that Mooney’s current attorneys be provided the same information.
Mrs. Marsee said last year when McGee was resentenced that there were two other murder cases in her district which possibly could be impacted by the same under-18 issue. Presumably the Mooney case is one of them.