Hosier to be sentenced on murder charge next week

Lawyers move for new trial

Unless his lawyers' motion for a new trial is granted, David Russell Hosier will hear his sentence next week for first-degree murder.

A nine-man, three-woman jury from St. Charles County deliberated for just over an hour on Oct. 23 before convicting Hosier, 58, of first-degree murder for killing Angela Gilpin, 45, on Sept. 28, 2009.

The same jury spent about two hours and 45 minutes on Oct. 25 before recommending Hosier be executed for that murder.

Cole County Presiding Circuit Judge Patricia Joyce also will sentence Hosier for his conviction on charges of armed criminal action, first-degree burglary and illegally possessing a weapon because he's a convicted felon.

Joyce on Tuesday ordered the state's Probation and Parole staff to complete a sentencing advisory report with suggestions for the sentences she should impose on those other convictions.

But Hosier's public defenders, Donald Catlett and Janice Zembles, want her to overturn the convictions and hold a new trial.

On Monday, they filed a 46-page motion raising 46 issues with procedural decisions Joyce made during the trial or the various pre-trial hearings.

For almost all of the points, their motion said Joyce "clearly erred and/or abused discretion, to Mr. Hosier's prejudice."

Their complaints included Joyce's overruling:

• Their motion to dismiss the indictment charging Hosier because he had been detained illegally. Catlett and Zembles said Hosier was "unconstitutionally held, without counsel," from Nov. 5, 2009 - when federal officials dropped their charge that Hosier was a felon in possession of ammunition - until Dec. 8, 2009, when he first appeared in Cole County associate circuit court on the indictment.

They argued Missouri law required Hosier be served with a warrant immediately, or to be released if not charged within 24 hours.

• A motion to prevent Prosecutor Mark Richardson from giving the jury details of Hosier's 1993 Indiana conviction for kidnapping and beating a former girlfriend, arguing the information served to inflame the jurors.

"The only item of evidence the jury requested during their deliberations on guilt ... was the very documents from Indiana which delineated the specifics of that Indiana conviction," they wrote.

• Their continuing objections to allowing jurors to hear comments that Hosier or Angela Gilpin had made or written to others, arguing that was "hearsay" evidence that shouldn't have been allowed.

They also complained that Joyce:

• Allowed Richardson to tell jurors about Rodney Gilpin's killing, show them pictures of his body or discuss evidence from his killing, including his clothes or a bullet found in them.

Rodney Gilpin, 61, was Angela's estranged husband, but the two were reconciling. Richardson argued Hosier had developed a relationship with Angela during the Gilpins' separation, then killed both of them because he was unhappy the couple was reconciling.

Their bodies were found, together, in the doorway to Angela's apartment in the 1100 block of West High Street.

Richardson originally filed two sets of charges against Hosier in September 2009 - with first-degree murder and armed criminal action charges for Rodney's killing contained in a separate case.

Catlett and Zembles wrote in the new trial motion: "As the state elected not to litigate (the second case), any evidence of Rodney Gilpin's death in the first phase of the trial of the death of Angela Gilpin was evidence of other bad acts not legally or logically relevant to this crime."

Until this motion, neither side had explained the decision not to pursue the Rodney Gilpin murder in the same trial as the Angie Gilpin case.

Hosier's lawyers argued that all the errors they cited resulted in his being denied his right to due process, equal protection of the laws, right to a defense, right to a fair and impartial trial and his right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment.