In 1988, Michael Tenneson, 28, went on trial in Denver District Court, charged with two counts of first-degree murder after deliberation for the 1987 deaths of Jeffrey Sheffield, 23, and Mitchell Gonzales, 22.

Before the trial had even gotten under way, Tenneson confessed to three more murders in Wisconsin. He'd broken into a home, shot and killed its owner, killed the owner's mother, then killed the owner's girlfriend. But he wasn't confessing because of a sudden attack of conscience: He hoped to be extradited back to Wisconsin, where there was no death-penalty statute.

Denver wanted him first, though. Little was again on the case. Through his attorneys, Tenneson tried to claim that Sheffield had attempted to rob him after a night of drinking and snorting cocaine. But the prosecution proved that Gonzales and Sheffield had been murdered in their sleep. Although the Denver jurors hadn't yet been told of the Wisconsin murders, they easily convicted Tenneson of two counts of first-degree murder after deliberation.

At Tenneson's death-penalty hearing, his Wisconsin confession came into play, as did a previous conviction for raping an elderly woman.

The defense attorneys brought in a psychologist who testified that Tenneson suffered from fetal alcohol syndrome; the result was a "serious personality defect" that impaired the defendant's ability to tell right from wrong. The syndrome wasn't enough to save him from prosecution, his lawyers argued, but enough that Tenneson should be sentenced to life in prison, not death. The prosecution brought in its own psychologist, however, who testified that even if Tenneson were a victim of fetal alcohol syndrome, which he doubted, it wouldn't have caused him to murder people.

And at closing, Little had his own description of Tenneson's personality defect: "He kills people." As the jury went off to deliberate, Little was confident that the defendant would soon be on death row.

In fact, the jurors accepted the prosecution's aggravators and determined that they outweighed any mitigating factors. But they were tripped up by the fourth step.

Eleven of the jurors quickly agreed with Little's assertion that Tenneson deserved to die. The last juror, however, refused to even participate in the deliberations; she had a "gut feeling" it wouldn't be right to vote for the death penalty. The rest of the jurors decided to go home and return the next day, when they might be able to convince the hold-out to at least take part in the discussions, as she'd been sworn to do when she was put on the jury. But the next day, she sat in a corner with her back to the others.

In any other criminal case, a vote of eleven to one either for or against the defendant would have resulted in a mistrial, and the whole process would begin again with a new trial and jury. But in a death-penalty case, a jury had to be unanimous if voting for the "ultimate punishment"; otherwise, the sentence was life in prison. Angry, the eleven jurors were forced to surrender, and Tenneson went to jail for life.

 

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