Robert O. Marshall

Robert O. Marshall (born December 16, 1939) is a former Toms River, New Jersey, businessman who in 1984 was charged with (and later convicted of) the contract killing of his wife, Maria.

The case attracted the attention of true crime author Joe McGinniss, whose bestselling book on the Marshall case, Blind Faith, was published in 1989. Blind Faith was adapted into an Emmy-nominated 1990 TV miniseries starring Robert Urich and Joanna Kerns.

In 2002, Marshall wrote the book Tunnel Vision: Trial & Error, in which he challenged the conclusions McGinniss drew in Blind Faith. While pointing out flaws in the judicial process he believed failed him, Marshall also alleged that his trial was contaminated by police misconduct and compromised testimony and evidence.

Incident

On the night of September 7, 1984, Robert O. Marshall, an insurance broker and chairman of the Ocean County Chapter of the United Way fund, and his wife, Maria, were traveling north on the Garden State Parkway from Harrah's in Atlantic City when they felt a vibration in one of the tires. When they pulled over at the Oyster Creek picnic area in Lacey Township (which was closed at the time), he noticed the right rear tire was flat, which Marshall alleged was tampered with.^[1] He was then knocked unconscious by a blow to the back of his head, and approximately $1,500 worth of casino winnings was stolen.^[2] He alleged that he found his wife with two gunshot wounds, slain across the front seat.^[3]

After a police investigation, Marshall was arrested on December 19, 1984. The prosecution theorized that Marshall had hired two men to kill his wife so that he could collect on a $1.5 million insurance policy. He was later convicted of the murder-for-hire and sentenced to death by lethal injection. Also arrested were 47 year-old Robert Cumber of Bossier City, Louisiana, 49 year-old James Davis of Shreveport, Louisiana and 42 year-old Billy Wayne McKinnon of Greenwood, Louisiana, who was a former Caddo Parish, Louisiana deputy officer.^[4]

Trial

During the six-week trial, Marshall revealed that he was planning to leave his wife and had hired a private investigator to determine if Maria was consulting with a divorce lawyer, and to determine the whereabouts of over $15,000 of missing casino winnings. Marshall was involved in a 14-month affair with Saraan Kraushaar, a vice-principal at Pinelands Regional High School in Tuckerton, whom he told he wanted to "get rid of" his wife to use her insurance money to pay off his debt.^[5]

In 1972 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty was being administered unconstitutionally across America. Death penalty states enacted new statutes to comply with the strictures of this decision, New Jersey acting in 1982. The first 26 murderers whose death sentence reached the New Jersey Supreme Court got their sentences vacated on one ground or another. Marshall's was the first to be affirmed by the state's High Court, on January 24, 1991. The vote affirming the conviction was 6 to 1, and to uphold the death penalty phase was 5 to 2. The court's opinion was lengthy, and found errors, particularly in the guilt phase of the trial which, however, were found to be harmless, meaning there was no reasonable chance they affected the jury's verdict. There were later post-conviction proceedings in the state courts, and the N.J. Supreme Court wrote opinions in three other proceedings, including a so-called "proportionality" review that compares the appellant's culpability with others in death penalty cases.

U.S. District Court Judge Joseph E. Irenas ruled on April 8, 2004 in Camden, New Jersey that Marshall received ineffective assistance from his attorney during the death penalty phase of his trial. The 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the decision on November 2, 2005. On March 20, 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal by the New Jersey Attorney General's Office. On May 12, 2006, Prosecutor Thomas F. Kelaher declined to retry the death-penalty phase of the case, citing as reasons the difficulty in presenting evidence more than 20 years after the crime, and the probability of many more legal appeals should Marshall be sentenced to death again. With resentencing pending, Marshall faced a minimum of 30 years in prison (in which case he would have been released in 2014) and a maximum of life in prison with no possibility for release on parole before serving 30 years.

On August 18, 2006, Marshall was resentenced to life in prison, with the possibility of parole in eight years. This will make Marshall, incarcerated since his arrest, eligible for parole in 2014. Until his removal from New Jersey’s death row, Marshall had been the longest-serving inmate there since the state reinstated the death penalty in 1982.

See also

• Blind Faith for further details of the Marshall murder trial
• Tracey Gold, an actress who is Marshall's daughter-in-law

References

1. ^ http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,956649,00.html
2. ^ http://www.ccadp.org/robertmarshall.htm
3. ^ http://www.nytimes.com/1984/09/08/nyregion/the-region-woman-44-slain-at-parkway-stop.html
4. ^ http://www.nytimes.com/1984/10/15/nyregion/the-region-2-suspects-seized-in-jersey-slaying.html
5. ^ http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_product=PI&s_site=philly&p_multi=PI&p_theme=realcities&p_action=search&p_maxdocs=200&p_topdoc=1&p_text_direct-0=0EB29A86DAA8615C&p_field_direct-0=document_id&p_perpage=10&p_sort=YMD_date:D&s_trackval=GooglePM

External links

• http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/m/robert_o_marshall/index.html

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Name	Marshall, Robert
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Date of birth	December 16, 1939
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