Scott Alan Lehr was a tree trimmer in the Phoenix area who was convicted of three first-degree murders committed between November 1991 and 1992. His case ran through more than three decades of Arizona and federal court proceedings: a first trial in 1996, a partial reversal in 2002, a retrial in 2009, an affirmance by the Arizona Supreme Court in 2011, and a federal habeas corpus petition that was still pending in 2024. As of July 2024 he remained under sentence of death in Arizona. Little about his life before the charges is on record.
The three women who died were Margaret Christorf (M.C.), Michelle Morales (M.M.) and a third woman known only by the initials B.C. Margaret Christorf, in her mid-thirties, died on November 8, 1991. Michelle Morales, 19, died on February 7, 1992. Both deaths occurred in Phoenix. The third woman, B.C., died in Phoenix in 1992; her full name and the date of her death are not on record. The offenses tried in the same case against other women began in February 1991.
Lehr was also tried for offenses against several other women and girls who survived.
The State charged Lehr in July 1992 in Maricopa County Superior Court. He was a tree trimmer in the Phoenix area at the time. The charges covered the three deaths and the other offenses, and the case was tried in two parts before Judge Stephen A. Gerst: a capital trial, and a separate non-capital trial on the severed sexual-offense counts.
In November 1996 a jury returned 37 verdicts. Lehr was convicted of three counts of first-degree murder, three counts of attempted first-degree murder, two counts of aggravated assault and seven counts of kidnapping. The remaining twenty-two convictions concerned surviving women and girls.
For the murder of B.C. he received a death sentence. Life sentences were imposed on kidnapping and sexual assault counts. The full list of sentences on every count is not on record.
Lehr's mandatory appeal went to the Arizona Supreme Court, which decided it on January 30, 2002. The central issue was the DNA evidence. The court held that the trial judge had wrongly barred cross-examination of the State's DNA expert and defense expert testimony about the laboratory's protocol, and that the error was not harmless for the counts involving M.M., M.C. and a surviving woman. It rejected Lehr's challenges to the identification procedures and to the prosecutor's comments on the evidence.
The disposition was split. The court reversed and remanded the convictions and sentences on seven counts of the capital trial, which included the murder convictions for M.M. and M.C. and the counts involving the surviving woman. It affirmed the remaining capital-trial convictions, including the first-degree murder conviction for B.C., and all of the non-capital convictions. On its own review of the death sentence for B.C., the court found that the aggravating factor of an especially cruel or depraved murder was not proven, but that two other aggravating factors were sufficient, and it affirmed that sentence.
Months after the Arizona Supreme Court's decision, the United States Supreme Court held in Ring v. Arizona (2002) that a jury, not a judge, must find the facts that make a defendant eligible for the death penalty. On April 30, 2003, the Arizona Supreme Court issued a supplemental opinion in Lehr's case.
By then Lehr stood convicted of one first-degree murder, that of B.C., and thirty non-capital counts. The trial judge had found two aggravating factors still standing after the 2002 ruling: that Lehr had been convicted of another offense for which life imprisonment or death could be imposed, and that he had a prior serious offense. The judge had also found some mitigating circumstances, among them that Lehr was a good father, husband and son, that he had no prior criminal record, and that he was a model prisoner. The court held that those aggravating factors fell outside what the Sixth Amendment requires a jury to find, but concluded that it could not rule the error harmless beyond a reasonable doubt, because it could not say how a jury would have weighed the evidence. It vacated the death sentence and sent the case back for resentencing under the revised Arizona statutes. Chief Justice Jones concurred in part and dissented in part, preferring to treat the judge-only sentencing as structural error.
The State retried the counts reversed in 2002 before Judge Andrew G. Klein of the Maricopa County Superior Court. The jury found Lehr guilty of first-degree murder and sexual assault in the cases of M.C. and M.M., and of sexual assault and kidnapping in the case of the surviving woman. The exact dates of the verdicts are not on record.
In the penalty phase the jury sentenced Lehr to death for the murders of Margaret Christorf and Michelle Morales. The aggravating factors it found were that he had been convicted of another offense for which life or death could be imposed and that he had a prior felony conviction involving violence or the threat of violence. Before the trial the State withdrew two other aggravating factors. Resentencing for B.C. followed the 2003 remand: the jury could not agree on a sentence of death for her murder, the State withdrew its request for death, and the court imposed life imprisonment, consecutive to Lehr's other sentences. Each non-capital offense carried a consecutive term of seven years.
The death sentences were handed down in April 2009.
Lehr appealed directly to the Arizona Supreme Court. Justice W. Scott Bales wrote the opinion, decided July 13, 2011. Chief Justice Rebecca White Berch and Justices A. John Pelander and Robert M. Brutinel joined it, Judge Patricia A. Orozco sat by designation, and Justice Andrew D. Hurwitz did not take part.
Lehr raised eight issues: whether he had validly waived his presence at trial, the use of other-acts evidence and the joinder of counts, the admission of earlier testimony from a surviving woman, DNA testing, applause by jurors, the premeditation instruction, an amendment to the notice of aggravating factors during trial, and the exclusion of that woman's testimony opposing the death penalty. The court rejected each one. It treated the amendment of the aggravating-factor notice as harmless error. It also reviewed the death sentences independently, found the two aggravating factors proven, and concluded that the mitigating evidence was not substantial enough to call for leniency. It addressed twenty-six further constitutional claims that earlier decisions had already rejected. Its holding was a single sentence: "We affirm Lehr's convictions and sentences."
Lehr petitioned the United States Supreme Court for review, and the petition was denied on October 11, 2011.
Lehr filed his first petition for post-conviction relief in the Arizona courts in 2014. The ruling and its date are not on record, but the petition did not succeed. On February 19, 2019, he gave notice of intent to file a federal habeas corpus petition, and he filed the initial petition in the United States District Court for the District of Arizona on December 17, 2019. An amended petition followed on April 15, 2021.
On July 1, 2024, Judge Dominic W. Lanza denied three motions in the case, which is captioned Lehr v. Thornell. The first sought a stay so Lehr could return to state court on several claims, the second sought appointed counsel for further state post-conviction proceedings, and the third sought appointed counsel for state DNA proceedings. The judge held that the claims Lehr wanted to take back to state court were already technically exhausted, because Arizona procedural rules would bar them, and that Arizona law offered another route for DNA testing requests. The order did not decide the merits of the amended petition.
As of the federal court's order of July 1, 2024, Lehr was held under his death sentences in Arizona and his habeas petition was pending. No execution date is on record.
Lehr's motive is not on record, and few details of his early life are on record beyond his work as a tree trimmer, his role as a father, husband and son, his lack of a prior criminal record and his conduct as an inmate. The date of his arrest is not on record; the July 1992 charging date is. The exact verdict and sentencing dates of the 2009 retrial are not on record.
February 1991: the first of the offenses tried in the Maricopa County case occurs.
November 8, 1991: Margaret Christorf dies in Phoenix.
February 7, 1992: Michelle Morales, 19, dies in Phoenix.
1992: B.C. dies in Phoenix.
July 1992: the State charges Lehr in Maricopa County Superior Court.
November 1996: jury verdicts on three counts of first-degree murder and dozens of other counts; death sentence for the murder of B.C.
January 30, 2002: Arizona Supreme Court reverses two murder convictions and affirms the rest.
April 30, 2003: Arizona Supreme Court vacates the death sentence for B.C.'s murder after Ring v. Arizona.
2009: retrial; guilty verdicts; death sentences for the murders of Margaret Christorf and Michelle Morales; life imprisonment for the murder of B.C.
July 13, 2011: Arizona Supreme Court affirms the convictions and sentences.
October 11, 2011: U.S. Supreme Court denies review.
2014: first state post-conviction petition filed.
December 17, 2019: federal habeas petition filed; amended April 15, 2021.
July 1, 2024: federal district court denies motions for a stay and for appointed counsel.