Bigby v. Dretke
| James Bigby | |
|---|---|
| Born | James Eugene Bigby April 8, 1955 Fort Worth, Tarrant County, Texas |
| Died | March 14, 2017 (aged 61) Huntsville, Walker County, Texas |
| Criminal charge | Capital murder |
| Criminal penalty | Death |
| Killings | |
| Victims | Michael Trekell Jayson Trekell-Kehler |
| Date | December 24, 1987 |
Bigby v. Dretke 402 F.3d 551 (5th Cir. 2005), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit heard a case appealed from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas (trial court) on the issue of the instructions given to a jury in death penalty sentencing. The decision took into account the recent United States Supreme Court decisions concerning the relevance of mitigating evidence in sentencing, as in Penry v. Lynaugh.
On December 24, 1987, Grace Kehler returned home in Fort Worth, Texas, to find 21-year-old Michael Trekell, with whom she lived, and their infant son dead, the deaths ruled homicides by forensic investigators. On December 26, 1987, Fort Worth police were called to a Fort Worth motel where a police standoff occurred. James Bigby later surrendered without incident. He gave a written statement to the police confessing to the murders two days later. Bigby was charged with the murder of the male victim and of drowning the man's infant son, both of whom he knew. The mother of the murdered infant identified Bigby as being with her son just prior to his death.
When the case came to trial in 1991, Bigby used the insanity defense with several psychiatrists testifying to his mental illness. One testified that Bigby suffered from an intractable paranoid schizophrenia with paranoid delusions that prevented him from distinguishing between right and wrong, and concluded that Bigby committed the murders as a direct result of his mental illness.
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