William Bracy was convicted of murder in two states within eighteen months. In July 1981 a jury in Cook County, Illinois, found him guilty of the murders of Frederick Lacey, R. C. Pettigrew and Richard Holliman, who died in Chicago on November 12, 1980. In December 1982 a jury in Maricopa County, Arizona, found him guilty of the murders of William "Pat" Redmond and Helen Phelps, who died in Phoenix on December 31, 1980, and of the attempted murder of a third person, who survived. Both juries sentenced him to death.
The Illinois case became a reference point in American law on judicial bias. The trial judge, Thomas J. Maloney, was later convicted in federal court of conspiracy, racketeering, extortion and obstructing justice, on charges that included taking bribes to fix murder cases. Bracy had not paid him, and he argued that Maloney had reason to rule harshly against defendants who had not. In 1997 the U.S. Supreme Court, in a unanimous opinion, held that he had shown enough to seek discovery on that claim. His Illinois death sentence was set aside in 2002 and the Governor's clemency orders of 2003 left natural life as the maximum sentence. Bracy died in custody before either death sentence could be carried out.
Frederick Lacey, R. C. Pettigrew and Richard Holliman died in Chicago on November 12, 1980. Their deaths were charged against three men: Bracy, a co-defendant named Roger Collins, and a third man, Murray Hooper, who was tried separately. The main witness against Bracy and Collins was a man who admitted taking part in the events.
The ages and families of the three men who died have not been reported.
Seven weeks later, on December 31, 1980, William "Pat" Redmond, 47, and Helen Phelps, 70, died in Phoenix. A third person who was present survived. The prosecution's case in Maricopa County was that Bracy and Hooper had traveled from Chicago to Phoenix and that a former Phoenix police officer, Edward McCall, was the third man. The Arizona Supreme Court later wrote that Bracy was a hired killer and held that the aggravating circumstance of pecuniary gain "indisputably" applied.
In Cook County, Bracy and Collins were charged with robbery, aggravated kidnaping and murder. Their trial before Judge Maloney began on July 20, 1981. Bracy's appointed counsel, Robert McDonald, had been named in mid-June. On July 29, 1981, the jury found both men guilty on all charges.
The same jury then heard a two-stage sentencing hearing, which began on July 31, 1981. In the second stage the prosecution introduced the pending Arizona double-murder and attempted-murder charges. The jury found statutory aggravating factors and no mitigating factors sufficient to prevent a death sentence, and the court imposed death sentences for the murders, stayed pending appeal. It imposed concurrent 60-year terms for robbery and aggravated kidnaping.
On direct appeal the Illinois Supreme Court affirmed. It held that the evidence supported the verdicts and that the other claims raised, among them prosecutorial misconduct, the denial of a continuance and the use of the Arizona evidence at sentencing, did not require reversal. It also rejected challenges to the Illinois death penalty statute and to the death-qualified jury. The court reduced the aggravated kidnaping sentences from 60 to 30 years because the kidnaping had not been for ransom. The murder and robbery convictions and the death sentences stood. The Illinois Supreme Court affirmed the denial of postconviction relief in 1992.
Bracy was tried in Maricopa County Superior Court together with Hooper, before Judge Cecil Patterson. The trial began on October 18, 1982. Bracy was represented by a public defender, Steve Rempe; Hooper's lawyer was J. Grant Woods. The defense case was that the men were in Chicago when the Phoenix killings occurred.
During the trial the defense twice sought a mistrial. The first motion followed a statement by the prosecutor to the jury that witnesses had identified the defendants from photographs on which the judge had not yet ruled. Judge Patterson refused a mistrial but later held the photographs inadmissible. The second followed the defense's discovery during trial of an anonymous telephone call made to the sheriff's office on the night of the killings. It, too, was denied.
On December 24, 1982, the jury convicted Bracy and Hooper on all counts. The Arizona Supreme Court listed Bracy's convictions as conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, two counts of first-degree murder, attempted first-degree murder, three counts of kidnapping, three counts of robbery and first-degree burglary. Judge Patterson sentenced Hooper to death in February 1983, and Bracy also received a sentence of death for each first-degree murder conviction.
In 1985 the Arizona Supreme Court affirmed the convictions and the sentences. It upheld the aggravating circumstances based on Bracy's prior Illinois convictions, the pecuniary gain circumstance, and the statutory circumstance concerning the manner of the murders. It reversed one aggravating circumstance, grave risk of death to others, because the surviving victim had been an intended victim and not a bystander. It found no mitigating circumstance substantial enough to call for leniency.
Thomas Maloney was a judge in Cook County from 1977 until he retired in 1990. In April 1993 a federal court convicted him of conspiracy, racketeering, extortion and obstructing justice, after an investigation of corruption among Chicago judges. The charges included taking bribes to fix murder cases. Bracy and Collins had not bribed him. In their federal habeas petition they contended that Maloney, having accepted money to rule for some defendants, had an interest in showing himself severe toward the others, so as to deflect suspicion.
The federal district court denied the claim and a request for discovery in 1994, and in 1996 the Seventh Circuit affirmed by a divided vote, ruling that Bracy had not shown the "good cause" for discovery that the habeas rules require. The Supreme Court heard argument on April 14, 1997. Bracy's lawyer argued that Maloney had a reputation as a law-and-order judge, that the negotiation of a bribe in another murder case overlapped with Bracy's trial, and that Bracy's trial counsel had been a former associate of Maloney. The Illinois Solicitor General answered that Bracy had shown no actual bias in his own case and that the evidence against him was strong. During the argument Justice Ginsburg observed that the record showed Bracy was also under a death sentence in Arizona. His lawyer replied that this was being challenged, with proceedings pending in the federal district court in Arizona.
On June 9, 1997, the Court reversed the Seventh Circuit in an opinion by Chief Justice Rehnquist, joined by all the justices. It accepted that Bracy's theory was speculative, since a judge who took bribes might as easily have tried to appear fair to everyone. It held, however, that if such "camouflaging" bias were shown it would violate the guarantee of due process, which requires a "fair trial in a fair tribunal." The presumption that public officials act properly had been "soundly rebutted" by Maloney's conviction, and other facts supported discovery: Bracy's trial counsel had announced readiness for trial weeks after his appointment without asking for time to prepare for sentencing, and the trial fell between murder cases that Maloney had fixed. Bracy might not in the end prove actual bias, the Court wrote, but he had made a sufficient showing of good cause. The scope of discovery was left to the district court.
After the remand the district court, in 1999, denied relief on the convictions and granted relief on the sentences. In 2001 a panel of the Seventh Circuit affirmed the convictions and reversed the sentences, by a two to one vote. That opinion was vacated when the full court agreed to hear the case.
On March 29, 2002, the Seventh Circuit, sitting en banc, affirmed the convictions and vacated the death sentences. A majority held that no discretionary ruling in the guilt phase showed actual bias by Maloney, but that the penalty hearing had been tainted by what the Supreme Court had called compensatory bias, so that Bracy and Collins were entitled to a new hearing before an impartial judge. The State of Illinois could proceed with a new penalty hearing if it chose. In his dissent Judge Posner noted that Bracy had since been convicted in Arizona and sentenced to death there, a sentence then still pending.
Before a new Illinois penalty hearing was held, Governor George Ryan issued clemency orders on January 10, 2003, that left natural life imprisonment, without parole or mandatory supervised release, as the maximum sentence for Illinois prisoners under sentence of death. The circuit court remanded Bracy and Collins to the Department of Corrections to serve natural life sentences, and they appealed. The Appellate Court of Illinois affirmed. Following an earlier decision of the Illinois Supreme Court, it described the orders as more in the nature of limited pardons than sentencing commutations, and held that with the death sentence removed, natural life was the only legal consequence left under the statutes, so that no new hearing was required.
Three other men were convicted in these cases. Roger Collins, convicted with Bracy in Chicago, was also remanded to serve natural life after the 2003 clemency orders. Edward McCall, the former Phoenix police officer, was convicted in a separate trial in Arizona and sentenced to death; he died in custody before his sentence could be carried out.
Murray Hooper was sentenced to death in both states. His Illinois sentence was commuted in 2003, the Seventh Circuit vacated his Illinois conviction in 2013 and he was not retried there, and he was transferred to Arizona in 2006. The Arizona Board of Executive Clemency denied his petition in 2022, and he was executed in Florence on November 16, 2022.
Bracy died in custody, in or about 2005, before either death sentence could be carried out. The exact date has not been reported, and no later hearing on his Arizona sentence is known after the 1997 argument.
The Supreme Court's decision in Bracy v. Gramley concerned a narrow question: not whether Bracy had proved bias, but whether he had earned the right to try. Federal habeas rules allow discovery only on a showing of good cause. The Court held that an interested-judge theory, though speculative, met that standard when the judge had been convicted of the very corruption the theory required. It restated the rule that a defendant is entitled to a fair trial before a fair tribunal.
In Bracy's own case, the Seventh Circuit in 2002 upheld the convictions and found that the bias affected only the penalty phase.
Several points in the Arizona case were contested. The defense argued at trial that Bracy and Hooper were in Chicago when the killings occurred, and the jury rejected that account. The anonymous call to the sheriff's office on the night of the killings was not disclosed to the defense until the trial, and the trial judge declined to declare a mistrial because of it.
The Arizona Supreme Court's finding that he acted for pay was made at sentencing, and no one said to have commissioned the killings was convicted.
On the Illinois case, the en banc court found that Judge Maloney's bias, if any, did not affect the verdict. Bracy's claim that it did was rejected as to the convictions, which were never overturned.
November 12, 1980: Frederick Lacey, R. C. Pettigrew and Richard Holliman die in Chicago.
December 31, 1980: William "Pat" Redmond and Helen Phelps die in Phoenix; a third person survives.
July 20, 1981: Bracy and Collins go to trial before Judge Maloney in Cook County.
July 29, 1981: Jury finds Bracy and Collins guilty of murder, robbery and aggravated kidnaping.
July 31, 1981: Sentencing hearing begins; death sentences follow.
October 18, 1982: Bracy and Hooper go to trial in Maricopa County.
December 24, 1982: Jury convicts Bracy and Hooper on all counts.
February 1983: Death sentences imposed in Arizona.
1985: Illinois Supreme Court and Arizona Supreme Court affirm convictions and death sentences.
1992: Illinois Supreme Court affirms denial of postconviction relief.
April 1993: Judge Maloney convicted in federal court of conspiracy, racketeering, extortion and obstructing justice.
1994 and 1996: Federal district court and Seventh Circuit deny Bracy's habeas claim.
April 14, 1997: U.S. Supreme Court hears argument in Bracy v. Gramley.
June 9, 1997: Supreme Court reverses unanimously and remands for discovery.
1999: District court denies relief on the convictions and grants relief on the sentences.
March 29, 2002: Seventh Circuit en banc affirms the convictions and vacates the Illinois death sentences.
January 10, 2003: Governor Ryan's clemency orders leave natural life as the maximum Illinois sentence.
2004: Appellate Court of Illinois affirms the remand of Bracy and Collins to serve natural life sentences.
About 2005: Bracy dies in custody.
November 16, 2022: Hooper is executed in Florence.