The Mississippi Supreme Court has agreed to review the appeal of a man convicted in a 1999 capital murder case in Tallahatchie County.
The state’s high court issued an order Nov. 3 to grant the request of state inmate Antonio Puncharell “Isha” McDowell, 41, of Cascilla, who had filed a petition for the judicial review.
Justices will ponder the Nov. 18, 2021, ruling of Circuit Judge Jimmy McClure, in a decision handed down in the First Judicial District of Tallahatchie County Circuit Court at Charleston, to sentence McDowell to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
During a three-day October 2000 trial in Charleston, a jury found McDowell guilty of capital murder and conspiracy to commit robbery in the Nov. 3, 1999, shooting death of Cascilla store owner Bobby Julian Whitten, 60.
Circuit Judge Andrew Baker sentenced McDowell to life without eligibility for parole on the murder charge.
A 2012 U.S. Supreme Court decision found mandatory life-without-parole sentences of offenders under the age of 18 unconstitutional — a violation of prohibitions against cruel and unusual punishment — and made the ban retroactive. Although McDowell was 18 at the time of sentencing, he was 17 at the time of the crime.
In 2016, McDowell filed a motion seeking resentencing, renewing it in January 2019.
At the close of a circuit court hearing in Charleston on Sept. 30 and Oct. 1, 2019, during which testimony was heard and documentary evidence presented, the jury declared it was hopelessly deadlocked on the question of whether the life without parole sentence should remain. On Oct. 4, 2019, McClure declared a mistrial.
After more legal maneuvering, and upon further instruction by the state, McClure took up the case again in the fall of 2021, leading to his resentencing of McDowell to life without parole.
McDowell then appealed McClure’s ruling to the Mississippi Court of Appeals, arguing that, under state law, the circuit court should have sentenced him to life with a possibility for parole since the jury was unable to decide.
The state Court of Appeals reviewed the case and on March 7, 2023, voted to affirm McClure’s sentence of life imprisonment without eligibility for parole.
The state Supreme Court’s decision to review McDowell’s case was a virtual split vote of justices voting to grant and to deny the petition.
