The Third Circuit Court of Appeals this week heard oral arguments on whether Richard R. Laird should be removed from death row to the general prison population.
Laird, who’s been on death row for 35 years for the grisly murder of gay artist Anthony Milano, maintains that jurors during his 2007 retrial would have spared his life if they knew the extent of his childhood sexual abuse.
On Oct. 8, federal appellate judges D. Michael Fisher, Peter J. Phipps and L. Felipe Restrepo spent 45 minutes considering Laird’s appeal. The proceeding was held in the Maris Courtroom of the U.S. Court House, 601 Market St. in Center City.
In December 1987, Laird and his accomplice Frank R. Chester kidnapped Milano, 26, to a wooded area in Tullytown, Pa., and slashed his throat so many times that Milano’s head was nearly severed.
The case became a cause celebre in the local LGBTQ+ community because both defendants voiced homophobic slurs and taunted Milano by slow dancing inside a Bucks County tavern, prior to kidnapping Milano and killing him.
Prosecutors described the case as an “anti-gay hate crime,” but there were no LGBTQ-inclusive hate-crime laws on the books at the time.
In 1988, Laird and Chester were sentenced to death by a Bucks County jury. But both men eventually were granted new trials due to faulty jury instructions.
Rather than retry Chester, Bucks County authorities agreed to remove him from death row to the general prison population in 2016. In return, Chester agreed to serve a life sentence without the possibility of parole. Chester, 55, is currently incarcerated at a state prison in Marienville, Pa.
However, no such deal was offered to Laird, who’s believed to have inflicted the most severe wounds upon Milano. After a second trial in 2007, Laird was resentenced to death.
On Oct. 8, defense attorney Joseph W. Luby told the three-judge panel that Laird’s previous attorneys gave him a “threadbare” defense. “Jurors [in 2007] didn’t have a comprehensive understanding of the abuse,” Luby asserted.
As a young boy, Laird was forced to provide oral sex to his father and to receive anal sex from him. The alleged abuse solidified Laird’s inclination to murder Milano, according to Luby.
If jurors in 2007 were alerted to the strong connection between Laird’s childhood abuse and Milano’s murder, they may have spared his life, according to Luby.
“Mr. Laird’s counsel failed to capture the severe and ongoing sexual abuse that Mr. Laird suffered as a child,” Luby told the judges. “Mr. Laird was routinely raped by his own father — both orally and anally — from the age of five ‘til the age of 11. To this date, Mr Laird experiences flashbacks to the experience of severe rectal pain. He still suffers involuntary gag reflexes that trace back to the sensory experience of his father ejaculating into his mouth.”
The appellate judges agreed that a clinical psychologist, David Lisak, in 2012 elicited graphic details about Laird’s abuse. If the 2007 jury had access to that information, they may have viewed Laird’s situation with more sympathy.
But the judges also noted the 2007 jury did receive some limited information about Laird’s sexual abuse.
Appellate prosecutor John T. Fegley said the additional details elicited by Lisak in 2012 wouldn’t have made a difference in Laird’s 2007 retrial. “Piling on” more information about Laird’s abuse for the jurors’ edificatio wouldn’t have changed his penalty, according to Fegley.
Fegley maintained Laird’s 2007 attorneys employed a “reasonable strategy” when defending him and they weren’t constitutionally deficient in their advocacy.
Additionally, Fegley scoffed at the notion that Laird was so homophobic, he couldn’t stand being touched by another man. Fegley underscored that Laird taunted Milano by slow dancing with Chester in a bar shortly before kidnapping Milano and murdering him.
“If [Laird] couldn’t stand being touched by another man, why did he slow dance with Chester?” Fegley posed. “He should have acted in an entirely different manner.”
Luby countered by insisting the 2007 jurors were “materially uninformed” about the case. He said Lisak uncovered graphic details about Laird’s abuse that strongly mitigated his crime.
“Mr. Laird was severely traumatized,” Luby continued. “[Such trauma] is enormously magnified when the perpetrator is one’s parent. This kind of abuse brings about a tremendous stress that is unresolvable. Young men internalize this kind of abuse. They suffer from a sense of worthlessness and vulnerability.”
Luby also claimed Laird’s 2007 attorneys acted unprofessionally by not securing a private setting when probing Laird about his past. Instead, a guard was present and Laird felt very inhibited. In 2012, Laird had more privacy when interviewed by Lisak and spoke openly about the abuse.
The judges acknowledged jurors may have viewed Laird’s “smoldering antagonism” for gay men in a more compassionate light if they knew more about the abuse.
But the judges also noted that Laird might be lying about the sexual abuse, because it allegedly occurred 50 years ago and Laird’s father isn’t alive to dispute Laird’s allegations.
Moreover, the judges questioned whether Laird has no one but himself to blame for not being candid about the alleged sexual abuse until 2012.
In summation, Luby suggested a “reasonable probability” that Laird would not be on death row if jurors in 2007 had a fuller understanding of his childhood abuse.
For his part, Fegley said the seriousness of Laird’s alleged abuse wasn’t glossed over in 2007.
“You cannot say [jurors] heard hardly anything about the abuse,” Fegley argued. “They heard about it from Laird’s brother [Mark Laird] and two experts.”
The judges said they will review court transcripts and issue a ruling at a later date.
After the hearing, Fegley reiterated that Laird belongs on death row.
“This [prosecution] office has no doubt that the sentence Richard Laird received for the murder of Anthony Milano is warranted under the laws of this Commonwealth,” Fegley said in an email. “The jury found that the heinous circumstances of this slaying, which formed the basis of the aggravating factor they found beyond a reasonable doubt, outweighed all mitigating factors that Laird had to present. This determination was purely a product of the facts properly being applied to the law and not any allegations of perceived deficiencies by trial counsel. We will continue our advocacy for the affirmance of Laird’s sentence.”
Luby declined to comment for this story. “Thanks for your interest, but we don’t have any comments about the case beyond those we’ve made to the court,” Luby wrote in an email.