BOSTON -- Two teenage brothers sentenced to die for murders committed by their father 13 years ago in Arizona finally are free from the death penalty after a decade of appeals, their lawyer said Friday.
Boston attorney Robert Keefe said the death sentences imposed on Rick and Raymond Tison have been overturned for good, and they can now concentrate on appealing their convictions.
'The interesting thing is that these boys have been sentenced to death three times following appeals and hearings, and neither one actually committed a crime,' said Keefe, who handled the case for the law firm Hale and Dorr.
'The death penalty phase is finally over' Keefe said. 'Previously all attention was focused on the death penalty, but now that that is over, we can concentrate on appealing their original convictions.'
Rick, then 19, and Raymond, then 18, along with a third brother, Donald, helped their convicted killer father Gary and another murderer, Randy Greenawalt, escape from the state prison in Florence, Ariz., on July 30, 1978.
Before they were stopped at a roadblock two weeks later, authorities said they killed Marine Sgt. John Lyons, his wife, son and a niece in Arizona and a honeymooning couple -- James and Margene Judge -- in Colorado.
Gary Tison and Greenawalt actually carried out the murders.
Donald Tison was shot to death at the roadblock on April 11, 1978. Rick and Raymond and Greenawalt were captured. The father fled into the desert where he died of exposure. His body was found about 10 days later.
Even though they did not actually take part in the killings, Rick and Raymond were convicted in 1979 in Yuma County, Ariz., and sentenced to death because they were part of the criminal enterprise.
Their plight was made into a 1983 movie 'Killer in the Family' starring Robert Mitchum.
After a lengthy appeal process during which the sentences were twice upheld, two judges last July in Arizona finally changed the death sentences to life in prison, Keefe said.
The U.S. Supreme Court at one point said the brothers were entitled to a hearing to determine if they intended to kill anyone or displayed reckless indifference toward human life.
Keefe said the boys did not want to take part in any killings and had been manipulated psychologically to help their father, whom they knew only through visits while he was in prison.
Keefe noted that Arizona this spring carried out an execution after reinstituting the death penalty. Greenawalt, who was also convicted in the Lyons murders, is near the top of the list to be executed, he said.
Keefe said Hale and Dorr entered the case in 1981 on a no-fee basis, a fact that was referred to in the movie 'Reversal of Fortune' as the Alan Dershowitz character explained to Claus von Bulow why lawyers charged some clients huge fees so they could handle other cases for free.
