U.S. Supreme Court Declines to Hear Shonda Walters Death Penalty Challenge

WASHINGTON, D.C.—The U.S. Supreme Court today declined to hear a case challenging the constitutionality of the death penalty.

The case involves Shonda Walters, the Lock Haven woman sentenced to death in 2005 for murdering a neighbor with a hatchet. The brutal homicide occurred in March of 2003, the victim James Sementelli, 83, of N. Summit St., Lock Haven. A jury deliberated less than 30 minutes April 18, 2005, finding Walters guilty of first degree murder; the next day the same jury sentenced her to death.

Walters has been on death row since that time.

News media accounts said the Supreme Court offered no comment today as it turned away the Walters’ challenge. Her attorney, Daniel Silverman, had argued the death penalty violates the Eighth Amendment because “our standards of decency have evolved to the point where the institution is no longer constitutionally sustainable.” In the appeal to the court Walters through her counsel asked the justices to determine if the imposition of the death penalty violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. The court offered no comment supporting or dissenting from the decision to reject the case.

Silverman said Walter had been “ill-served by counsel, leaving serious questions about her guilt and eligibility for the death penalty.” Attorney Stephen Chadwick Smith had been her counsel at the time of the trial. Silverman said Walters, who is black, “joined a mostly black death row,” what he called “a system that even a state supreme court committee has acknowledged is plagued by racial discrimination.”