FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. — A former Fort Bragg soldier now on the military’s death row has a federal court hearing scheduled next year in Kansas about the death sentence he received for a series of rapes and murders in the late 1980s.
The Fayetteville Observer reported a hearing is scheduled Feb. 23, 2015, for Ronald A. Gray, who’s appealing a military court’s decision to not grant extraordinary relief in attempts to overturn his death sentence.
The case was reassigned to Chief Judge J. Thomas Marten. Online records say the court has reserved six hours for the hearing.
“By mid-January, the court will set forth the matters to be addressed at the hearing,” the records state.
The federal case was filed in 2008 for Gray, who reached the rank of specialist and was a cook at Fort Bragg. He’s been held at the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, since his conviction at a court-martial in 1988.
Gray’s lawyers have claimed he had an ineffective lawyer in his earlier case. They also have argued that he lacked the mental capacity to stand trial, and they question the military’s jurisdiction over the case.
Gray had been was scheduled to be executed in December 2008 after President George W. Bush signed the order. But a federal judge halted the execution in November 2008 and then declined to lift the stay of execution.
The execution would have been the first in the military since 1961.
Gray was convicted and sentenced to die in military court for two murders and three rapes. He pleaded guilty in civilian courts to two separate murders and five separate rapes and was sentenced to three consecutive and five concurrent life prison terms.
