Faye Copeland remains under a life sentence. The 8th US Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis has upheld a Kansas City federal judge’s ruling to commute Copeland’s sentence to life in prison without parole. Copeland, who is 79, and her husband Ray Copeland had been sentenced to die for conspiring to murder five homeless men on their farm near Chillicothe in the late 1980s. The two used transients to buy cattle with worthless checks, then killed them to cover-up the crimes. Ray Copeland died in prison. The appeals court ruled the prosecutor deprived Faye Copeland of her due process rights in his arguments during the penalty phase of her trial.
