SPOKANE – Lawyers for Joseph Edward Duncan III insist his offer to plead guilty to four slayings and five kidnappings if Idaho state prosecutors drop the death penalty is motivated only by his desire to spare kidnap victim Shasta Groene from additional trauma.
Duncan will confess to four killings – including one in which no charge has yet been filed – and a series of other violent crimes so 9-year-old Shasta does not have to face him in court through years of appeals, federal public defender Roger Peven said Wednesday.
The little girl is expected to be a primary witness against Duncan when his murder trial begins Monday in nearby Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.
Duncan, 43, will talk even though the information will almost certainly be used against him when federal prosecutors file kidnap and murder charges later that will also carry the death penalty, Peven said.
“It’s the right thing to do,” Peven said. “He’ll talk about anything they ask him.”
But Prosecutor Bill Douglas of Kootenai County, Idaho, is not listening. Peven said Douglas has rejected the offer, made last week in a letter to the prosecutor.
Douglas did not respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press. A spokeswoman in his office said he did not want to speak since jury selection in the state case is imminent.
“We’re ready to go on the 16th,” she said.
Peven said Duncan cannot simply plead guilty in a death penalty trial, since by law it must be litigated. However, if the death penalty were off the table, he would be able to enter a guilty plea.
A typical death penalty case in Idaho might lead to two decades of appeals, Peven said.
“This gets rid of all of that,” Peven said. “Mr. Duncan doesn’t advantage himself in any way. He disadvantages himself in every way possible.”
The offer comes with no expectation that federal prosecutors will drop their previously announced plans to pursue the death penalty, Peven said.
“Mr. Duncan is fully aware that this in no way binds the United States in its prosecution of him for any charges it may bring,” the letter said.
In the letter, made public in an effort to sway Douglas, Peven and Kootenai County public defender John Adams, said that Duncan will admit to kidnapping Shasta Groene and kidnapping and killing 9-year-old Dylan Groene – crimes he is not charged with – and to three first-degree murder and kidnapping charges that he faces in state court if prosecutors agree to drop the death penalty in exchange for life in prison with no parole.
Duncan is charged with killing the children’s mother, their 13-year old brother and their mother’s boyfriend in May 2005 at their home near Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.
Court documents allege Duncan, 43, a Tacoma native who spent most of his adult life in Washington prisons for sexual crimes against children, committed the slayings so he could kidnap the two children to molest them.
“Mr. Duncan will admit to the intentional killing of Dylan Groene in Montana in the early part of 2005, as well as all other crimes committed against Shasta and Dylan Groene,” the letter said.
In court documents, the prosecution alleges Duncan took the two children to a primitive campsite in Montana, molested them, and eventually killed Dylan.
Douglas has consistently rejected a plea bargain for Duncan. Steve Groene, father of the abducted children, in recent months has asked for a plea bargain so Shasta would not have to face Duncan in court. Steve Groene is recovering from recent throat cancer surgery and was not immediately available for comment Wednesday.
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