Maynard Helgeland
August 1979
Omaha, Nebraska

Omaha World-Herald
(Omaha, Nebraska)
March 24, 2007

Grief, pain won't end for cabbies' survivors

BY CHRISTOPHER BURBACH
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER

Nearly three decades after Maynard Helgeland was murdered in 
his Omaha taxicab, his three children, now middle-aged 
themselves, aren't sure what to think or feel about the scheduled 
execution of his killer.

So many years have gone by since 1979, when Helgeland and 
Reuel Van Ness were killed. So many court appeals for the man 
who murdered them, Carey Dean Moore.

Execution dates, come and gone, since the first one in 1980. Life 
continuing for the survivors of Helgeland and Van Ness, while 
Moore sits on death row.

They have adjusted. But the cabbies' deaths left holes unfilled, 
and Moore's long stay on death row has left the situation feeling 
unresolved.

"I'm not going to take any satisfaction or any joy out of Mr. 
Moore's death," Steve Helgeland said Friday. "I would hope that 
no one would take any joy out of another person's death. But 
some people might find some satisfaction in the fact that this is 
what the state said should happen, and it happened."

Said his brother, Kenney Helgeland: "It's about time they did 
something, one way or another. It's been a long, drawn-out affair. 
A lot of money has been wasted that could have fed a lot of 
people."

Their sister, Lori Renken, asked: "Why now?"

"It's a joke," she said. "Thirty years and millions of dollars later, 
why? If it would have been two years after my father was 
murdered, that would have been one thing. But I don't see any 
reason to execute him now."

The grief and pain of their father's death came flooding back 
Thursday when a reporter called the Helgelands, who live in 
South Dakota, with the latest news about the case.

The Nebraska Supreme Court has set a May 8 execution date 
for Helgeland's killer. The justices did so after Moore wrote them 
a letter saying he no longer wished to fight the death penalty. 
Moore asked the court to schedule his execution.

The case took on a political tone as well. The May 8 date was set 
by the high court one day after the Nebraska Legislature voted 
25-24 against repealing the death penalty. Then the Nebraska 
Legislature's Judiciary Committee, in a hastily organized 
meeting, advanced a bill that would alter the state's death 
penalty law.

That bill would limit death sentences only to those who could not 
be safely housed in prison. It's a long way from passing. It's 
unclear whether it would apply to Moore.

Relatives of Helgeland and Van Ness said they don't want 
Moore's victims to be lost in a debate focused solely on the killer.

"(Moore) has drawn the process out," Steve Helgeland said. "It's 
not anything that I've done, or my family's done, or the state's 
done.

"I don't want Carey Dean Moore to be hung out there as some 
kind of martyr to the death penalty process, and my father and 
Mr. Van Ness become the footnotes, just a couple of anonymous 
cabdrivers."

Maynard Helgeland and Reuel Van Ness, both 47, were killed 
four days apart in 1979 - Van Ness on Aug. 22, and Helgeland 
on Aug. 26.

Van Ness was dumped near Standing Bear Lake in northwest 
Omaha. Helgeland was found in his blood-spattered cab parked 
near 22nd and Leavenworth Streets. The crimes terrorized 
Omaha cabdrivers.

When arrested, Carey Dean Moore, then 21, confessed to police 
that he had shot both men repeatedly while trying to rob them 
after they picked him up as a fare.

Moore's then-14-year-old brother, Donald, was with him during 
the Van Ness killing. Donald Moore was convicted of second-
degree murder and sentenced to 10 years to life in prison.

Carey Dean Moore was convicted in 1980 in Douglas County 
District Court of two counts of first-degree murder. Later that 
year, he was sentenced to die.

Now, that sentence appears more likely than ever to be carried 
out, nearly 27 years after the murders.

"They should go ahead and execute him," said Van Ness' 
stepbrother, Tom Brown of Waterloo, Neb. "They've got him 
dead to rights. They know for sure he's the one who did it."

For the Helgelands, the prospect of a May 8 execution puts them 
"right back on the roller coaster," said Kenney Helgeland, who 
lived and worked with his dad - and would have been driving the 
cab that fateful day had he not taken a day off.

"You never think it would hit home after all this time, but it does," 
Kenney Helgeland said.

None of the three Helgelands opposes the death penalty. Yet all 
three of Helgeland's children said it would be all right with them if 
Moore lived the rest of his life in prison - but only if it was 
guaranteed that he could never be released.

They said they doubted any such guarantee could be made.

Lori Renken's feelings about whether Moore should be executed 
have changed through the years.

"If in 1981 you would have asked me this question, I would have 
said, 'Hallelujah, I want to be there,'" she said. "But now, why 
now? It doesn't seem like it will serve any purpose."

She said she harbors no hate toward Moore but doesn't know if 
she has forgiven him.

"I do think about and pray for his family," Renken said. "I pray for 
him, too. But he doesn't deserve to ever be free."

Steve Helgeland, who teaches in Hartington, Neb., said the 
execution date changes things.

"(The possibility of Moore's death) has been an abstraction 
through the years," he said. "If it does become a reality this time, 
it makes it more imperative for myself that I find a way to forgive 
him before it happens. . . . I sympathize with Mr. Moore's family. 
And I hope that in the final judgment of things, that he comes out 
all right on the other end."

That said, Steve Helgeland added that actions have 
consequences - and that the courts had decided that the death 
penalty was an appropriate consequence for Carey Dean 
Moore's actions.

"That's not my decision to make," he said. "That's the state's 
decision. We make our choices, and Mr. Moore made some bad 
ones. That's how it came to this."

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Omaha World-Herald
(Omaha, Nebraska)
March 23, 2007

Execution date of May 8 set for Carey Dean Moore

BY LESLIE REED
WORLD-HERALD BUREAU

LINCOLN - Unless he changes his mind, Carey Dean Moore 
appears almost certain to go to the electric chair on May 8, after 
spending nearly 27 years on Nebraska's death row.

Moore, now 49, was sentenced to death in June 1980 for the 
murders of Omaha cabdrivers Reuel Van Ness Jr. and Maynard 
Helgeland in robberies five days apart in August 1979. He was 
21 at the time; his victims each were 47.

Moore's younger brother, Donald, then 14, was sentenced to 10 
years to life for participating in Van Ness' murder, the first 
slaying. He has been paroled repeatedly but returned to prison 
each time.

In a document filed earlier this month with the Nebraska 
Supreme Court, Carey Moore said he was finished appealing his 
death sentence.

He said he did not object to the attorney general's request to 
schedule his execution and would make no further attempt to 
delay it. He described his request for an early May date as his 
"last wish."

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court scheduled Moore's 
execution for May 8 and issued his death warrant.

Moore's attorney, Alan Peterson of Lincoln, filed a document 
acknowledging Moore's wishes.

He wrote that he believes Moore has grounds for a civil rights 
lawsuit challenging Nebraska's electric chair procedures, but 
Moore has chosen not to pursue that lawsuit.

In an interview Thursday, Peterson said attorney-client privilege 
prevented him from further discussing Moore's decision.

Peterson, who has handled Moore's federal and state appeals 
since 1988, said he could not answer when asked if he would try 
to persuade Moore to change his mind.

The Supreme Court's order setting the execution date came one 
day after the Legislature voted 25-24 against repealing the death 
penalty. Lawmakers rejected a bill by State Sen. Ernie 
Chambers of Omaha that would have replaced Nebraska's death 
penalty with a sentence of life in prison without possibility of 
parole.

The court's order prompted an angry outburst from Chambers 
during debate on another issue Thursday.

"The court didn't even have the decency to give repeal a decent 
burial," he said. "They knew this man is suffering depression. . . . 
They were so eager. What this Supreme Court has done is 
indecent, it is cruel, and it is a slap in the face at me."

Chambers said the execution date comes "thanks to my 
colleagues."

Moore has been housed with other death row inmates at the 
Tecumseh State Prison since that facility opened in 2002.

It is unknown whether someone outside Moore's case could try to 
prevent his execution.

Eric Aspengren, executive director of Nebraskans Against the 
Death Penalty, said his group is pondering that question. But he 
said it appears unlikely that it could stop an execution if that is 
what Moore wishes.

"We're looking into it, of course, but I don't believe we can 
interfere because he has an attorney," Aspengren said. "He 
(Moore) pretty much decides what happens with his case. I'd like 
to do what I can to stop it, but I don't think we can."

Terry Werner, a volunteer with Nebraskans Against the Death 
Penalty who makes regular visits to death row, said he does not 
think Moore's mind can be changed. Werner said he saw Moore 
last month.

"I don't think there's much persuading," he said. "He's pretty 
depressed. He's been in there since he was 22 years old, and 
he's had enough."

No one has been executed in Nebraska since Robert Williams, 
who died Dec. 2, 1997, for the murders of two Lincoln women.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Undated newsclip, apparently from the Omaha World-Herald

The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected a Nebraska death row inmate's claim that his 19 years awaiting execution amounts to cruel and unusual punishment.

In an 8-1 ruling Monday, the Supreme Court refused to take up the cases of Nebraska's Carey Dean Moore and Florida's Askari Abdullah Muhammad, who both argued that long delays before carrying out executions violate the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Moore's attorney said death-penalty lawyers across the nation will continue to press the issue.

"This is not a dead issue," said Omaha attorney Ed Fogarty on Monday. "It's one whose time has not come."

Assistant Attorney General J. Kirk Brown, who says the lengthy-delay argument is "absolute silliness," said Monday's ruling will enable the lower courts to give it short shrift in future cases.

"There's not a court in this country that has ever given any credence to this argument, but it keeps coming up," he said. "I suspect it will keep coming up, but maybe this case can be used for the courts to give it summary review. Heaven forbid we consume more time by looking at this issue."

Moore was sentenced to death for the 1979 robbery slayings of cab drivers Reuel Van Ness Jr. and Maynard Helgeland. In the Florida case, Muhammad has been on death row 24 years for the 1974 abductions and slayings of Sydney and Lilian Ganz in Miami. He also was convicted of killing prison guard Richard Berke in 1980.

Moore is scheduled for execution on Jan. 19. However, he has a pending appeal before the U.S. District Court in Lincoln. His attorney on that case, Alan Peterson of Lincoln, said he would promptly file a request for a stay of execution. It is expected that the court will grant that delay.

Justice Stephen G. Breyer was the only Supreme Court justice voting to hear arguments in the case. 4 votes are necessary to grant review.

"Where a delay, measured in decades, reflects the state's constitutionally own failure to comply with the Constitution's demands, the claim that time has rendered the execution inhuman is a particularly strong one," he wrote in a dissent.

Justice Clarence Thomas took the extraordinary step of writing an opinion concurring in the court's denial of review.

"I am unaware of any support in the American constitutional tradition or in this court's precedent for the proposition that a defendant can avail himself of the panoply of appellate and collateral procedures and then complain when his execution is delayed," Thomas said.

Brown said it's ludicrous for death row inmates to argue that delay makes their sentences unconstitutional.

"The position that a system that affords an inordinate amount of review in these cases should be turned on and criticized for taking an inordinate amount of time to go through these levels of review frankly strikes me as ludicrous," he said.

But Fogarty said it wasn't Moore who slowed down his case - it was the state, with repeated appeals of adverse rulings over one of Nebraska's sentencing factors. He said Moore's case would have been ideal to address the questions of delay.

"The lower courts won't give a serious issue serious consideration," he said. "The only court with enough horsepower is the Supreme Court. If they won't do it, nobody will do it. The lower courts won't handle this hot potato."

But he predicted the issue will arise again in Moore's case.

"What will the Supreme Court say in 2005, when Carey Moore is back saying the government still hasn't gotten it right?," he asked. "Then we'll have a man on death row for 25 years, with the State of Nebraska still failing to adopt a constitutional standard."

Brown rejected Fogarty's contention that state appeals have delayed Moore's case.

"I think the people of the State of Nebraska have as much right to obtain a correct answer from the courts as Carey Dean Moore does," he said.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The Atlantic Monthly
November 2005

What Would Zimbabwe Do?

"Comparativism"—using foreign legal rulings to help interpret the Constitution—is startlingly on the rise in the U.S. Supreme Court

by Emily Bazelon

[these two paragraphs are extracts from a longer article]

In 1999 one of the scores of death-row appeals that land at the Supreme Court each year caught the eye of Justice Stephen Breyer. Thomas Knight, who had been sentenced to death by the State of Florida in 1975 for killing a married couple, argued in the appeal that he had been living in anguished anticipation of execution for so long that his sentence had become a form of cruel and unusual punishment. Knight's case was joined with that of Carey Moore, who'd been on Nebraska's death row for nineteen years for killing two cabdrivers.

No court in the United States had ever lifted a death sentence for this reason. But Breyer had a hunch that courts in other countries might have done so, and he asked his clerks to investigate. He had issued a similar directive earlier that term, when he wanted to know more about other countries' approaches to campaign-finance law. "I remember his exact words," says one of Breyer's clerks from that year. "He said, 'We're not the only court in the world. See what they have to say.'" Breyer has come to refer to proponents of this approach—namely, judges who use international legal precedents for context as they interpret the U.S. Constitution—as "comparativists."

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