Maurice Oscar Byrd was convicted in 1982 of four counts of capital murder for the deaths of four people in Des Peres, a suburb in west St. Louis County, Missouri, on October 23, 1980. A St. Louis County jury sentenced him to death on each count. After appeals in the Missouri and federal courts, he was executed in Missouri on August 23, 1991. He was 36.
The deaths were a single event. No other death has been attributed to him, and the Missouri counts were the only ones on which he was sentenced.
The Des Peres police department asked the St. Louis area Major Case Squad for help on October 23, 1980, and the squad was activated that day. James E. Wood, 51, Edna R. Ince, 68, and Carolyn R. Turner, 51, died that day. Judy M. Cazaco, 37, died about ten days later.
Money was taken, and the jury later found that each of the four deaths was committed for money or something of value. Byrd, then 25, was charged with four counts of capital murder.
Byrd moved to Savannah, Georgia, on October 27, 1980, four days after the deaths, to join his family there. He was arrested in Georgia about eight months later, in mid-1981, and was charged in Missouri with four counts of capital murder.
The trial took place in 1982 in the St. Louis County trial court and was divided into a guilt phase and a penalty phase. The jury convicted Byrd on all four counts of capital murder and found two aggravating circumstances for each: that the murder was committed while the defendant was engaged in another capital murder, and that it was committed for money or something of value. It fixed the punishment at death on each count. The sentence was imposed in December 1982.
The jury was made up entirely of white jurors. Byrd's lawyers later argued that the prosecutor had used peremptory challenges to remove Black prospective jurors.
The Missouri Supreme Court, sitting en banc, heard the direct appeal as State v. Byrd, No. 64656. It decided the case on September 11, 1984, and denied rehearing on October 9, 1984. Byrd raised eight points: that the removal of jurors opposed to the death penalty denied a fair cross-section of the community; that individual questioning of jurors on pretrial publicity should have been allowed; that the state had improperly questioned its own witness; that a witness had been wrongly recalled after a perjury charge; that his wife had been made to testify against him; that evidence from a witness whose memory had been refreshed by hypnosis was wrongly admitted; that character evidence had been wrongly allowed in rebuttal; and that the death penalty was cruel and unusual and racially disproportionate. The court rejected each point and affirmed the convictions and sentences. The United States Supreme Court denied certiorari in 1985.
Byrd then moved for post-conviction relief under Missouri Rule 27.26. The trial court denied it, and the Missouri Court of Appeals affirmed in Byrd v. State, 723 S.W.2d 37 (1986). Certiorari was denied in 1987.
He next petitioned for a writ of habeas corpus in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri. Judge John F. Nangle denied relief on all nineteen grounds in 1988. The Eighth Circuit affirmed the denial in Byrd v. Armontrout, 880 F.2d 1, in 1989. The grounds the courts rejected included claims of ineffective assistance of counsel, the all-white jury, the exclusion of two prospective jurors, rulings on his wife's testimony, newly offered evidence from a further witness, racial disparity in death sentencing, and the limits placed on mitigation testimony.
An execution date of November 1, 1990, was set and then stayed in November 1990 while his lawyers filed a further appeal. By August 1991 the appeal on jury selection had been denied, and the Supreme Court's 1986 ruling against race-based jury strikes had been held not to apply to cases decided before 1986, which included Byrd's. Appeals for commutation were addressed to Missouri Governor John Ashcroft and to the chairman of the state Board of Pardons and Paroles ahead of the new date of August 23, 1991. Byrd was executed in Missouri on that date.
In April 1991 there were 73 prisoners under sentence of death in Missouri and the previous execution in the state had been that of George Gilmore on August 31, 1990. A February 1990 study by the United States General Accounting Office found that the race of the victim influenced whether defendants were charged with capital murder or sentenced to death.
Georgia appears in the case only as the place of his move and arrest after the deaths. At trial a prospective juror recalled an arrest in Savannah on an unrelated murder charge, and the prosecutor said he would ask a defense character witness about an alleged robbery and murder in Georgia. The court found the prejudice remote. No conviction or sentence in Georgia is known.
Byrd's lawyers challenged the all-white jury through the appeal process. The courts held that the 1986 ruling did not apply to his case, and the Eighth Circuit upheld the denial of habeas relief.
October 23, 1980: four people die in Des Peres, Missouri; the St. Louis area Major Case Squad is activated.
October 27, 1980: Byrd moves to Savannah, Georgia.
Mid-1981: Byrd is arrested in Georgia.
1982: St. Louis County jury convicts him on four counts of capital murder and sets death on each count.
December 1982: sentence imposed.
September 11, 1984: Missouri Supreme Court affirms.
1986: Missouri Court of Appeals affirms denial of post-conviction relief.
1988: federal district court denies habeas relief.
1989: Eighth Circuit affirms.
November 1990: execution date of November 1, 1990, stayed.
August 23, 1991: Byrd is executed in Missouri.