State v. Zachary

Johnson, J. would grant the writ application and assigns reasons The bare facts of this case raise several issues of concern. Defendant, Elizabeth Zachary, was present when her boyfriend, Paul Weber, killed George Taylor, and she assisted with covering up the crime. The state initially charged Weber and Zachary with 1st degree murder, by grand jury indictment. Zachary's case was severed, and charges amended to charge Zachary with obstruction of justice. Paul Weber, her former co-defendant, plead guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced to 40 years, twenty seven years of which were suspended, resulting in an actual sentence of incarceration of 13 years. On January 9, 1998, after trial, Zachary was found guilty of obstruction of justice in violation of 14:130.1 and sentenced to ten years. A bill of information charging Zachary as a habitual offender was filed a month later, on February 19, 1998, because Zachary had a prior conviction for burglary in Florida. The defense filed a motion to quash the habitual offender bill on July 30, 1998. The trial court judge, Jefferson Hughes, while not ruling on the motion to quash, declined to adjudicate defendant a habitual offender because he found defects in the guilty plea form used by the Florida court in the prior burglary conviction. In fact, Judge Hughes made a hand written note in the record stating that he declined to sentence the defendant as a habitual offender ""to make up' for the fact that the actual killer, Paul Weber, was allowed to plea to a reduced charge [although] he was the actual killer"". R., Vol.2, p. 371. The state did not seek supervisory review of the court's determination that there were defects in the guilty plea. In 1999, the state, upon discovery of the guilty plea colloquy in the burglary case, moved to reopen the habitual offender hearing. This prompted the defense to file two additional motions to quash and resulted in protracted litigation1 . When the state filed their motion to reopen the habitual offender hearing, Zachary was approximately a year and a half away from her parole release date. After serving nearly five years of her sentence for obstruction of justice, Zachary was released on parole in 2001.