Feb. 28 OREGON: Defense witnesses describe serial killer as religious, mellow Resentencing trial - Jurors hear from people who've visited Dayton Leroy Rogers in prison Serial killer Dayton Leroy Rogers is a thoughtful, religious man who sends birthday cards, coupons clipped from the newspaper and recipes, witnesses told a jury Monday. 6 people, all Seventh-day Adventists who got to know Rogers by visiting him in prison, said they value him because of his impressive understanding of the Bible and his willingness to embrace religion. Rogers was a Seventh-day Adventist growing up but left the church before 1987, when he tortured, mutilated and killed at least 7 women. Rogers' attorneys called their 1st witnesses Monday and are expected to close their case as early as today. Closing statements could come Thursday. Kathy Loewen, a Salem resident and pastor's wife, said she has spent hundreds of hours with Rogers and is impressed with his biblical interpretations. "He can really dig into the Scriptures, and he comes up with some really good ideas," Loewen said. "We'll say, 'We're having some problems with teenagers at the church,' and he'll come up with ideas that really work." Loewen described Rogers as mellow and cheerful at the Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem. But during visits at the Clackamas County Jail since his resentencing trial started, she said, "he's broke down sobbing." Darrel Comstock, a member of a Stayton Seventh-day Adventist church, described Rogers as affectionate and caring. Comstock said Rogers' name and photograph were published a few years ago in a church directory. Most of the defense witnesses said they have talked little or not at all with Rogers about his crimes. "He has expressed regret," said Gary Gantz, an Idaho pastor who said that when he lived in Oregon, he met with Rogers nearly 200 times. Gantz speculated on a factor in Rogers' crimes: "I think the vodka unleashed something in Dayton, put his conscience to sleep." 2 Clackamas County juries have sentenced Rogers, a former Canby lawn-mower repairman, to death since his conviction in the late 1980s, but the Oregon Supreme Court overturned both sentences. A 3rd jury convened 2 weeks ago to decide on a new sentence: death; life in prison with the possibility of parole; or life without the possibility of parole. Defense attorneys are arguing for any sentence but death. On Monday, they called Marco Montez, a convicted murderer who met Rogers on death row. Montez said other inmates have physically and verbally abused Rogers, whom they consider at the bottom of the prison pecking order. "He's been choked, spit on, slapped," said Montez, who was dressed in inmate garb and wore leg cuffs. But Montez said Rogers has never responded in an aggressive manner. (source: The Oregonian) ILLINOIS: Jury recommends death penalty for Runge A Cook County jury that convicted alleged serial killer Paul Runge of murder in the slashing deaths of a Chicago mother and her young daughter recommended Monday that he be executed. As the forewoman read the unanimous death sentence verdict, the Oak Forest native kept his gaze fixed downward, his usual pose throughout the 5 weeks of his murder trial and sentencing. Just as he opted against testifying on his own behalf, he left the room without saying a word. "I'm not a hateful person, but I hope he burns in hell for what he did not only to my daughter but to the others," said Ramon Rivera, whose daughter Yolanda Gutierrez and granddaughter Jessica Muniz died at Runge's hands in February 1997. Rivera and his wife and daughters managed to suppress their tears until the judge left the courtroom; then they hugged each other and the four prosecutors who procured the guilty verdict. The jury recommended that Runge, 36, become the 5th person sentenced to death in Cook County since former Gov. George Ryan cleared death row with mass clemency in 2003. Runge is scheduled to return to court March 28, at which time a judge will decide whether to affirm the jury's recommendation. "He took the lives of seven beautiful people, and it's only right for them to take his life now -- he's a monster," said Rivera, who sat side-by-side with relatives of Runge's other victims. "I wish that the good Lord will give me enough time to see him strapped to the gurney. Once he's gone, then I'll be satisfied." 'Ultimate candidate' But that likely will take years. Even once the case has moved through the appeals process automatic in death sentences, the state has no plans to lift the current ban on executions, and Illinois' last execution was 1999. "Paul Runge is the ultimate candidate for the death penalty," prosecutor Bernie Murray told the jury. "If not him, who?" Prosecutors touted Runge's brutal criminal history, which they said includes five other murders, a daring escape from the Department of Human Services in 2000, and the 1987 rape and torture of a 14-year-old Oak Forest girl he handcuffed in his father's home. She managed to wriggle free from her bindings once Runge left the home, and she went straight to police. She -- and the resulting seven years in prison Runge got -- are why he began killing and concealing his rape victims, prosecutor Michael Wolfe argued. "He enjoys sadistic rapes, and he couldn't leave them behind because they tell," Wolfe said of the 5 other women Runge allegedly raped, murdered and either dismembered or burned between 1995 and 1997. (source: Daily Southtown) IOWA: Don't grandstand on death penalty----Bringing it up now is for political show. Republicans in the Iowa Legislature would have you believe that the only thing that stands between them and revival of the death penalty in Iowa are the Legislature's Democrats. That's not quite the case. Yes, in the 2005 and 2006 sessions, with the 50-member Senate equally divided along party lines, Senate Democratic leaders have thwarted Republicans' efforts to debate a capital-punishment bill. That's fine. The last thing Iowa needs is a gut-wrenching debate on a criminal penalty that is of dubious value in deterring crime, extraordinarily expensive to administer and subject to the potential of a terrible error. Legislators should spend their time instead debating how best to boost economic development, improve student achievement in public schools and eliminate pollutants from Iowa rivers and lakes. It's simply disingenuous for Republicans to make such a big deal about the Democrats blocking the debate. They have had numerous opportunities to bring up the issue in previous years, but have passed. It's true that debating the issue would have been a waste of time after Gov. Tom Vilsack took office in 1999, because he made it clear he would veto any death-penalty bill. But Republicans had plenty of opportunities to debate the issue for 16 years under Gov. Terry Branstad, and they made only one serious attempt. The closest the Legislature came to restoring the death penalty was in 1995, when the House, with a Republican majority, passed a bill at Branstad's urging that would have made a narrow class of murders subject to capital punishment. The Senate, controlled by the Democrats, rejected the bill. Thirteen Republicans voted against the bill, too. The next year, when Republicans again controlled the House, no death-penalty bills were brought up. In 1997, when the Republicans controlled both chambers, the Senate Judiciary Committee debated a bill, but there were not enough votes to bring it to the floor. The House took a pass that year, too. Finally, in 1998, the last opportunity to send a bill to a governor who would sign it, the Republicans again took a pass. If the Republicans wanted to have a debate just for the sake of debate, which seems to be their goal this session, they could have done so in earlier years of Vilsack's terms. It is not a sign of weakness to want to avoid this issue. Ask anyone who went through the debate a decade ago. Lawmakers and citizens - those who sincerely believe murderers deserve to die and those who sincerely believe killing by the state is wrong - were deeply and passionately divided. Lawmakers on both sides were torn by a vote like none other in their careers. Some were moved to tears. No one took it as a lark, and it's unfair to ascribe purely political motives to those who don't want to put the General Assembly, or the people of Iowa, through it again. The members of the Legislature have a duty to protect the public, but they do not have a duty to waste time and emotion on a pointless debate about a punishment that has never been shown to be effective. (source: Editorial, Des Moines Register) ************ Professor, Senator debate cost of death penalty A Drake University law professor says the cost of reinstating the death penalty in Iowa is higher than supporters think. Republican state senator Larry McKibben of Marshalltown is trying to bring back the death penalty in the wake of convicted sex offender Roger Bently being found guilty of the murder of a 10-year-old Cedar Rapids girl. McKibben says after initial startup costs, it may actually be less expensive to execute someone like Bently -- rather than sentencing him to life in prison. McKibben says there are defense costs, but he says the costs would be the same as Bently has now. McKibben says they've cut the appeals process so that the death penalty would automatically be appealed to the Supreme Court. McKibben says it's not cheap to keep Bently in prison. McKibben says Bently is 37 and could live another 37 years with an annual prison cost of 25 to 35-thousand dollars a year, and he says Bently could develop a disease that raises the cost. Drake University law professor David McCord says McKibben "vastly underestimates" the cost of a death penalty. McCord says the death penalty cases have 2 phases, the guilt/innocent phase that Bently had. There's also the penalty phase, which Bently didn't have, that McCord says requires mental evaluations and expert witnesses and adds greatly to the cost. McCord says there's also the cost of training prosecutors, defense lawyers and judges to handle the death penalty -- which Iowa lawyers haven't done since 1965. McCord says if Bently lived another 37 years at a 30-thousand dollars a year prison cost, that's just over one million dollars, "That's a drop in the bucket for what it would cost to take that case to a death penalty." Senate democrats are vowing to block the death penalty debate this session. McCord and McKibben made their comments Monday on call-in program on K-U-N-I radio. (source: Radio Iowa News) TENNESSEE: U.S. Supreme Court refuses to hear appeal from death row inmate The Supreme Court refused without comment to consider an appeal by Tennessee death row inmate Gregory Robinson. Robinson was convicted in 1998 of ordering a Memphis gang to kill Vernon Green, an innocent bystander in an argument between 2 rival gangs, on April 30, 1997. Robinson's attorney, Ed Carey of Nashville, did not immediately return phone calls seeking comment Monday. A state Supreme Court ruling in 2004 reinstated a death penalty sentence for Robinson after a lower court reversed the conviction and sentence. According to court documents, Robinson told gang members "y'all know what to do" with Green and "take him fishing." Green was taken to a park where he was beaten and shot repeatedly, police records show. Prosecutor Joseph F. Whalen did not immediately return phone calls seeking comment. (source: Associated Press) MARYLAND: Prosecutors to seek death penalty for man A Baltimore County assistant state's attorney said yesterday that prosecutors will seek the death penalty against a 22-year-old former University of Maryland, Baltimore County student charged in the beating death of a woman he had met through a social networking Web site. John Christopher Gaumer of Waldorf was indicted yesterday in the Dec. 29 death of Josie Phyllis Brown, 27, of Hampden. He is charged with 1st-degree murder, 1st-degree rape, 1st-degree sexual offense, armed robbery and 3rd-degree sex offense, said S. Ann Brobst, a Baltimore County prosecutor. Brown had been missing since Dec. 29, when on Feb. 7 Gaumer led police to her body in a wooded area near a ramp leading from Interstate 95 to the Beltway near Arbutus. Police had charged Gaumer with murder Feb. 8. (source: Baltimore Sun)
