Over six days at the end of December 1987, Ronald Gene Simmons killed fourteen members of his own family in Dover, a small town in Pope County, Arkansas, and then two more people in the neighboring city of Russellville. The dead in Dover were his wife, all seven of his children, a son-in-law, a daughter-in-law and four grandchildren. The dead in Russellville were two people he had worked with. Others were hurt there before he surrendered to the city's police on December 28. Two juries convicted him of capital murder and sent him to death, and in both cases he refused, under oath, to let anyone appeal on his behalf.
That refusal is the reason the case has a life in American law. A priest who counseled inmates went to the Arkansas Supreme Court to appeal for him and lost. Another man under sentence of death in Arkansas took the question to the U.S. Supreme Court, which stayed the execution, heard argument and then, in April 1990, held that the inmate had no standing to bring the appeal at all. Simmons was executed on June 25, 1990, about two and a half years after the killings. No appellate court ever reviewed the merits of either conviction.
Simmons was born in Chicago on July 15, 1940, and grew up in central Arkansas, where his family settled in 1946.
He left school on September 15, 1957, to join the U.S. Navy. His first posting was the naval base at Bremerton, Washington, and he married in 1960. He left the Navy in 1963 and about two years later joined the U.S. Air Force, where he served until his retirement. His decorations included the Bronze Star and the Republic of Vietnam Cross. He retired on November 30, 1979, as a master sergeant.
The family moved to Ward, in Lonoke County, Arkansas, in late 1981, and in the summer of 1983 to a thirteen-acre property outside Dover, in Pope County. It had no telephone and no indoor plumbing, and a high fence stood around much of it. Simmons found a series of low-paying jobs in Russellville, the county seat a few miles to the south. He worked as an accounts receivable clerk at a trucking company and later spent about a year and a half at a convenience store owned by a local oil distributor. He quit that job on December 18, 1987, four days before the first deaths.
On December 22, 1987, Simmons killed his wife, his eldest son, who was visiting, and a young granddaughter. Later the same day he killed his four youngest children. Seven members of the family were dead by the end of that Tuesday.
Four days later, on December 26, he killed seven more members of the family in Dover: a son who lived in Fordyce, in Dallas County, with his wife and their infant son, and Simmons's eldest daughter, with her husband and their two young children. Later that day he went into Russellville and spent part of the evening at a private club. He stayed in Dover through the weekend.
By the evening of December 26, fourteen people were dead: his wife; the seven children of the marriage; his son-in-law; his daughter-in-law; and four grandchildren.
On Monday, December 28, Simmons drove into Russellville. What followed in the city lasted about forty minutes, and two people died in it. Kathy Kendrick was the first. J. D. Chaffin, known as Jim, was the second. Three other people were hurt, by the count in the Supreme Court's opinion, among them the man who had employed Simmons until ten days earlier and his former supervisor from the trucking company. All of them survived.
When Russellville officers arrived, he gave himself up. Only afterward did the scale of what had happened in Dover come to light, when police learned that fourteen members of his family had died there.
With Simmons in custody from the first day, investigators worked to account for each of the sixteen deaths. The state brought two separate sets of charges: one set of charges for the two deaths in Russellville, and another for the fourteen deaths in Dover.
Before either trial, Simmons underwent a state competency evaluation in Little Rock, and the examining psychiatrist found him sane and fit to stand trial. The court appointed two lawyers to defend him, and the prosecuting attorney took the case for the state.
The Russellville case was tried first, in Franklin County Circuit Court. Jury selection took less than six hours. On May 12, 1988, the jury convicted Simmons of capital murder for the deaths of Kathy Kendrick and J. D. Chaffin, and fixed the penalty at death. On May 16, 1988, the trial judge imposed the death sentence and an additional 147 years.
It was after that sentence that Simmons first set out the position he held to the end. Under oath, he asked that "absolutely no action by anybody be taken to appeal or in any way change this sentence," and he asked that it be carried out quickly. The trial court held a hearing on his competence to make that choice and found that his decision was knowing and intelligent.
The waiver did not stand unchallenged. Louis J. Franz, a priest who counseled inmates, filed in the Arkansas Supreme Court as Simmons's "next friend," a person who acts in court for someone unable to act for himself, and asked to pursue the appeal Simmons had declined.
The court decided the case in 1988, as Franz v. State, 296 Ark. 181, 754 S.W.2d 839. It held that the priest had no standing to appeal for Simmons. Along the way it set out the rule Arkansas would follow from then on. The state did not require a mandatory appeal in every death penalty case, the court said, but a defendant could forgo an appeal only after a judicial determination that he had the capacity to understand the choice between life and death and to knowingly and intelligently waive his right to appeal. The court then held that Simmons's waiver met that standard.
Franz and Darrel Wayne Hill went next to federal court and asked for a writ of habeas corpus. The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas denied it, again for lack of standing, in Franz v. Lockhart, 700 F. Supp. 1005 (1988).
The trial for the fourteen family deaths was held in Johnson County Circuit Court, in February 1989, before the same circuit judge who had presided over the first trial. During a conference at the bench, Simmons struck the prosecutor, who was not hurt, and sheriff's deputies restrained him. The state rested its case that day.
The jury of eight men and four women deliberated for more than four hours. On February 10, 1989, it found Simmons guilty of fourteen counts of capital murder and returned a sentence of death. The trial judge set the execution for March 16, 1989.
Simmons again asked to waive his direct appeal. The trial court held another hearing, and on March 1, 1989, found him competent to do so.
The Arkansas Supreme Court reviewed the second competency finding in Simmons v. State, 298 Ark. 193, 766 S.W.2d 422 (1989). Applying the standard it had set in Franz, it agreed with the trial court that Simmons had knowingly and intelligently waived his right to appeal. The court went out of its way to commend the trial judge and defense counsel, who it said had done "an exceptional job" of examining his capacity. His lawyers had gone through seven possible grounds for reversal with him, and he had rejected every one.
A third person then tried to step in. Jonas Whitmore, another inmate under sentence of death in Arkansas, asked to intervene in the case in his own right and as Simmons's next friend. The Arkansas Supreme Court denied the motion for lack of standing in a second 1989 decision, Simmons v. State, 298 Ark. 255, 766 S.W.2d 423.
Whitmore went to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court granted a stay of the execution set for March 16, 1989, while it considered his petition, and later agreed to hear the case.
The argument came on January 10, 1990. Whitmore's main claim on his own behalf was practical. Arkansas compared each death sentence against others in reviewing it, and he said he had "a direct and substantial interest in having the data base against which his crime is compared to be complete." If his own sentence were ever set aside and he were sentenced again, he argued, the Simmons case ought to be part of the comparison.
The Court decided the case on April 24, 1990, by a vote of seven to two, in an opinion by the Chief Justice. It held that Whitmore "does not have standing in his individual capacity to press an Eighth Amendment objection," because the injury he described depended on a chain of events too speculative to support a case in federal court. It also held that he could not proceed as next friend. A next friend must show that the real party "is unable to litigate his own cause due to mental incapacity," lack of access to the courts or a similar disability. Simmons had knowingly and voluntarily given up his right to appeal and had unimpeded access to the courts, so that requirement was not met. The Court dismissed the case for lack of jurisdiction. Its opinion quoted from a psychiatric interview in which Simmons had said that it would be "a terrible miscarriage of justice for a person to kill people and not be executed."
Two justices dissented. In their view the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments required appellate review of a death sentence "notwithstanding a defendant's desire to waive such review," and the Court should have relaxed the next-friend rules far enough to reach that question. The dissent opened by objecting that the Court was allowing a state to execute a man whose case no appellate court had reviewed. It noted that the Arkansas Supreme Court was the only state high court to have held that a competent capital defendant's waiver of appeal ended all review.
On May 31, 1990, the governor of Arkansas signed a second execution warrant, setting the date for June 25, 1990. Arkansas had carried out no execution between 1964 and June 18, 1990, when another condemned man was put to death; Simmons was the next. Ronald Gene Simmons was executed by the State of Arkansas on June 25, 1990. He was 49.
Because Simmons waived every appeal, neither conviction was ever reviewed on its merits by an appellate court. The seven possible grounds for reversal that his lawyers discussed with him before the second waiver were never presented to any court. The two dissenting justices in Whitmore argued that the federal Constitution required such a review whatever the defendant wanted; the majority decided the case on standing and did not reach that question.
Accounts differ on the number of people hurt in Russellville: the Supreme Court's opinion counts three, and other accounts count four.
The motive the prosecution put to the jury at the second trial was argued there and decided only by the verdict; it was never examined on appeal.
July 15, 1940: Ronald Gene Simmons is born in Chicago, Illinois.
September 15, 1957: He leaves school and joins the U.S. Navy.
1963: He leaves the Navy; about two years later he joins the U.S. Air Force.
November 30, 1979: He retires from the Air Force as a master sergeant.
Late 1981: The family moves to Ward, Lonoke County, Arkansas.
Summer 1983: The family moves to a property outside Dover, Pope County.
December 18, 1987: He quits his job at a Russellville convenience store.
December 22, 1987: Seven members of his family are killed in Dover.
December 26, 1987: Seven more members of his family are killed in Dover.
December 28, 1987: Kathy Kendrick and J. D. Chaffin are killed in Russellville and others are hurt; Simmons surrenders to Russellville police.
May 12, 1988: A Franklin County Circuit Court jury convicts him of capital murder for the Russellville deaths.
May 16, 1988: He is sentenced to death and an additional 147 years; he declares under oath that no appeal is to be taken.
1988: The Arkansas Supreme Court decides Franz v. State, denying a priest standing to appeal for him and holding his waiver knowing and intelligent.
1988: The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas denies federal habeas relief in Franz v. Lockhart for lack of standing.
February 10, 1989: A Johnson County Circuit Court jury convicts him of fourteen counts of capital murder and returns a death sentence.
March 1, 1989: The trial court finds him competent to waive his appeal.
1989: The Arkansas Supreme Court upholds the second waiver in Simmons v. State and denies Jonas Whitmore's motion to intervene.
March 1989: The U.S. Supreme Court stays the execution set for March 16, 1989.
January 10, 1990: Whitmore v. Arkansas is argued in the U.S. Supreme Court.
April 24, 1990: The Court dismisses Whitmore's petition for lack of standing, seven to two.
May 31, 1990: The governor of Arkansas signs a second execution warrant for June 25.
June 18, 1990: Arkansas carries out its first execution since 1964.
June 25, 1990: Ronald Gene Simmons is executed by the State of Arkansas.