Is threat of death penalty misused?

It's been almost eight years since Calvin Shane Myers admitted to stabbing his pregnant ex-girlfriend, Irene Christensen, at least a dozen times with a rusty hunting knife and leaving her to die in a Summit County snowbank, killing his unborn son in the process.

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Yet, early next month, his attorney will argue before the Utah Supreme Court that Summit County prosecutors overcharged Myers in order to force a quick resolution to the case.

It's something that may happen often, defense attorney Scott York says: Capital-murder defendants are threatened with the death penalty and are left with no choice but to plead guilty to save their lives.

"When you want to, you can use a vague law to strong-arm somebody out of their due-process rights," York said. "They threatened (Myers) with the death penalty and, guilty or not, he just never got his day in court."

York will tell the high court on Dec. 3 that the charge to which Myers pleaded — capital murder — was predicated upon the death of two people, when the evidence suggests that only one person actually died in December 1994.

The appeal isn't a direct challenge to the portion of Utah's criminal homicide statute that covers unborn children, although Myers was the first person ever charged under the 1985 law.

"This is not a case about fetal rights — that is properly a political question," Myers' appellate brief states. "This is a prayer for relief from the coercive use of the threat of capital punishment, where there was no legal basis for imposition of the death penalty."

Myers, now 30, pleaded guilty to one count of capital murder in February 1996. In exchange, Summit County prosecutors dismissed the second murder charge and agreed to a sentence of life in prison with the possibility of parole.

York argues in court documents that it was Myers' "self-preservation instinct" that led him to waive his right to trial and accept the deal.

'Stacked' charges?

It certainly is not unusual for capital murder defendants in Utah to avoid the death penalty through plea agreements.

A look at some recent high-profile death-penalty cases — the January murder of Garfield County sheriff's deputy Dave Jones, the July 2001 killing of Roosevelt Police Chief Cecil Gurr and the April 2000 shooting spree at Chevys Fresh Mex Restaurant in Sandy — all resulted in plea deals. And each of the defendants — Earl Leston Barnes, Lee Roy Wood and Quinn Robert Martinez, respectively — received sentences of life in prison without the possibility of parole.