Indiana justices: Death row inmate can only die once

You only die once.

It's not the name of the new Jame Bond flick.

It's a ruling Wednesday by the Indiana Supreme Court in an appeal filed by death row inmate Kevin Charles Isom.

Isom was convicted on three counts of murder in the 2007 killings of his wife, Cassindra, 40, and her children, Michael Moore, 16, and Ci'Andria Cole, 13.

The judge gave him a separate death sentence for each of the three murder convictions. But Isom raised objections to the consecutive death sentences in his appeal. And the justices agreed with him.

"Neither Isom nor the State provided much in the way of analysis on this issue," Justice Robert Rucker wrote in a footnote to the Supreme Court's unanimous opinion.

"Without citation to authority, Isom's one page argument essentially boils down to 'Kevin Isom cannot be put to death three times.'"

Ordering that sentences be served consecutively — basically one after the other — is a common practice in sentencing.

"From a legal perspective and a practical perspective," Judge Thomas P. Stefaniak Jr. reasoned at Isom's trial, "each victim is entitled to their own sentence." Stefaniak agreed with the Lake County jury's recommendation to give Isom a death sentence for each of the three murder convictions.

The consecutive death sentences were among several issues raised by Isom in a wide-ranging appeal of his convictions and punishment. And they were the only points where the high court agreed with the killer.

It wasn't a matter of practicality, however, but rather the judge's lack of legal authority to order the consecutive death sentences that prompted the Supreme Court to side with Isom.

The justices explained that judges have the authority to "determine whether terms of imprisonment shall be served concurrently or consecutively," but that "the death penalty is 'not a term of imprisonment.'

"Execution is a penalty of a radically different sort," the opinion notes. "It features incarceration only while appellate processes persist and does not contemplate a future release into society."

That finding prompted the justices to order Isom's case sent back to the trial court "with instructions to issue a new sentencing order consistent with this opinion."

Isom is one of 13 men currently awaiting execution on Indiana's death row at the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City.

The last state execution in Indiana was Dec. 11, 2009, when Matthew Eric Wrinkles was executed for killing his estranged wife, her brother and his wife in 1994 in Vanderburgh County. But neither Isom nor any of the other death row inmates has an execution date.

In the end, barring a reversal or pardon, the result will essentially be the same: Isom will still face death by lethal injection. But only once.

Call Tim Evans at (317) 444-6204 and follow him on Twitter: @starwatchtim