State of Missouri, Respondent vs. Donald R. Nash, Appellant.
Annotate this CaseA jury found Appellant Donald Nash guilty of capital murder for the 1982 killing of Judy Spencer. He was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole or probation for 50 years. Appellant argued on appeal that he was wrongly convicted under a section of state law that had been repealed in 1983, and that no other statute replaced it that criminalized the murder for which he was charged. Furthermore, Appellant argued that he was convicted on insufficient evidence at trial, because the trial court excluded his evidence that someone else committed the murder. The Supreme Court was not persuaded by Appellant’s interpretation of the statute in question, finding that “the apparent purpose of the 1983 enactment of the new section . . . was to make clear that an offense committed in 1982 should be charged and prosecuted according to the laws existing in 1982” and not after the changes were enacted. The Court also found that the evidence presented at Appellant’s trial was sufficient to support the jury verdict against him. The Court affirmed Appellant’s conviction and sentence.
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