Jury Recommends Death for 69-Year-Old Grandmother
1. Impact, Timeliness, Prominence, Proximity, Conflict, The Bizarre or Unusual and Currency.
2. Who – Faye Copeland, Ray Copeland.
2. What – Death Penalty Suggestion by Jury for Murders.
2. When – Tuesday Night trial, murders last year.
2. Where – Chillicothe, Mo. Livingston County.
2. Why – because she was responsible for the murder of four transient farm workers.
2. How – possible because of battered-wife-syndrome.
3. Personal sources (defendant’s attorney, Judge), observation (gender of jurors, length of deliberation), and stored (would be oldest on death row).
4. Copeland’s attorney, David Miller, from either a press conference or an interview. Circuit Judge E. Richard Webber, hearing his pre-sentence investigation in the courtroom. All of the other information in the story could have come from either observation or have been stored and looked up.
5. How were the four transient farm workers killed? Who is the oldest person on Missouri’s death row now, and what is their age? How come the court refused to allow a psychologist to testify about “battered-wife-syndrome?” Is there any evidence that Ray was abusive to Faye? What was the pre-sentence investigation ordered by the Judge meant to do?