Larry Lamont White has been convicted of the murders of three women in Louisville, Kentucky, all of whom died in 1983: Pamela Armstrong, Deborah Miles and Yolanda Sweeney. The cases were decided almost thirty years apart. In March 1985 a Jefferson Circuit Court judgment sentenced him to death for the murders of Miles and Sweeney. The Kentucky Supreme Court vacated that judgment in 1987, and on remand he pleaded guilty to the two murders and was sentenced to twenty-eight years in prison. In July 2014 a Jefferson Circuit Court jury found him guilty of Murder and First Degree Rape in the death of Pamela Armstrong and recommended a sentence of death, which the trial court imposed.
The Armstrong case had gone unsolved for more than two decades before Louisville police reopened it in 2004. His later appeals turned on the evidence of his earlier murder convictions and then on a claim that he is intellectually disabled and cannot lawfully be executed. In March 2020 the Kentucky Supreme Court ordered a hearing on that claim.
Pamela Denise Armstrong was 22 and lived in Louisville. She died on June 4, 1983. Her family waited nearly a quarter century for an answer, and after the 2007 charges they spoke of the closure the case finally brought.
Yolanda Sweeney was 21 and Deborah Miles was 22. They died in the days after Pamela Armstrong, in 1983, in Louisville. White was charged with their murders and was tried in the Jefferson Circuit Court.
The Jefferson Circuit Court entered its judgment on March 12, 1985. It sentenced White to death on two counts of "capital murder," those of Miles and Sweeney. The date of the verdict itself is not on record.
In December 1986 the Commonwealth moved to vacate the judgment and send the case back for retrial, relying on the U.S. Supreme Court's 1986 decision in Michigan v. Jackson. White did not oppose the motion. The Kentucky Supreme Court's motion panel passed the question to the full court on December 11, 1986. In 1987 the court granted reconsideration, vacated the judgment and remanded to the Jefferson Circuit Court for retrial. The ground was that the Commonwealth had used White's illegally obtained confessions.
There was no retrial. Upon remand White pleaded guilty to murdering Deborah Miles and Yolanda Sweeney, and he was sentenced to twenty-eight years' imprisonment. The date of the plea is not on record. The death sentences were therefore set aside and not reduced by a later court; the twenty-eight-year term followed the guilty pleas.
The year of White's release or parole is not on record. By December 2007 he had served twenty-five years in prison for the Miles and Sweeney murders. At that date he was serving a separate fifteen-year Kentucky sentence. By 2020 he had spent all but four of forty-three years of his adult life behind bars.
In 2004 the Louisville Metro Police Department's cold case unit reopened Pamela Armstrong's case. DNA evidence led police to name him. On December 27, 2007, a Jefferson County grand jury returned an indictment charging him with rape in the first degree and murder. He was 49.
The case, Commonwealth v. Larry Lamont White, was tried in Division Two of the Jefferson Circuit Court, before Judge James M. Shake. The jury trial ran from July 14 to July 28, 2014. On July 28 the jury found White guilty of Murder and First Degree Rape of Pamela Denise Armstrong. It recommended a sentence of death on the murder charge and twenty years for the first degree rape. The jury deliberated for about an hour and a half on the sentence.
The Commonwealth introduced evidence of the Miles and Sweeney murder convictions to establish the identity of the person responsible through similarity of the crimes. The trial court admitted it over White's objection. Sentencing was set for September 26, 2014, and the trial court sentenced him in line with the jury's recommendation. Under Kentucky law as it stood in 1983 he was eligible for a death sentence.
White raised thirty-three claims of error. The first, and the one the court treated as most serious, challenged the admission of the earlier murder convictions. On August 24, 2017, the Kentucky Supreme Court affirmed the judgment and the sentence of death. It held that the trial court had not abused its discretion in admitting the evidence, finding the similarities between the crimes sufficient and the probative value greater than the risk of prejudice, and that none of the other claimed errors required reversal. It also rejected his claim of intellectual disability, which rested on an IQ score of 76.
The court granted a petition for modification of the opinion on March 22, 2018.
White petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court. After its 2017 decision in Moore v. Texas, which concerned the execution of intellectually disabled defendants, the Court directed the Kentucky Supreme Court to reconsider White's death sentence. While the remand was pending, the Kentucky Supreme Court decided Woodall v. Commonwealth in 2018 and struck down the state statute that had required an IQ of 70 or lower to establish intellectual disability. White then filed motions of his own asking to withdraw the claim; his attorneys opposed.
On March 26, 2020, the Kentucky Supreme Court held that White could not waive the intellectual disability claim on his own. He faces a death sentence and had produced evidence creating reasonable doubt about whether he is intellectually disabled, namely two IQ scores recorded while he was a minor, 76 on one test and 73 on another, with adjusted ranges of 71 to 81 and 68 to 78. The court called the evidence of adaptive deficits thin and said that was a reason for a hearing, not a reason to deny one. It reversed and remanded to the Jefferson Circuit Court for an evidentiary hearing, with the burden on White to prove intellectual disability by a preponderance of the evidence. A separate order denied his motions to waive the claim.
The Commonwealth of Kentucky petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court, asking whether a capital defendant may waive such a claim. The petition was filed on August 24, 2020, a group of states led by Arizona filed a supporting brief, and on December 7, 2020, the Court denied it.
As of December 7, 2020, the death sentence for the murder of Pamela Armstrong had been neither carried out nor set aside; the result of the evidentiary hearing ordered in March 2020 is not on record.
The sentence for the Miles and Sweeney murders was twenty-eight years, and by 2007 he had served twenty-five years for them; the year of his release is not on record. The month and day of the Miles and Sweeney deaths in 1983 and the date of the 1985 verdict are not on record.
June 4, 1983: Pamela Armstrong dies in Louisville.
1983: Deborah Miles and Yolanda Sweeney die in Louisville, days later.
March 12, 1985: Jefferson Circuit Court judgment sentences Larry Lamont White to death on two counts of capital murder (Miles and Sweeney).
December 1986: the Commonwealth moves to vacate the judgment; White does not oppose.
1987: the Kentucky Supreme Court vacates the judgment, citing the use of his illegally obtained confessions, and remands for retrial.
After the remand: White pleads guilty to the two murders and is sentenced to twenty-eight years.
2004: Louisville Metro Police cold case unit reopens the Armstrong case.
December 27, 2007: Jefferson County grand jury indicts White for rape in the first degree and murder.
July 14 to 28, 2014: jury trial; July 28, guilty of Murder and First Degree Rape; death recommended for the murder, twenty years for the rape.
September 26, 2014: sentencing date set by the trial court.
August 24, 2017: Kentucky Supreme Court affirms the conviction and death sentence.
March 22, 2018: petition for modification of the opinion granted.
March 26, 2020: Kentucky Supreme Court reverses and remands for an evidentiary hearing on intellectual disability.
August 24, 2020: Kentucky petitions the U.S. Supreme Court.
December 7, 2020: the U.S. Supreme Court denies the petition.