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Serial Idler's death sentence upheldTopeka (ap) — TheKansas Supreme Court refused on Friday to remove a serial killer from death row who trolled for victims online, marking the first time the court has upheld a death sentence since Kansas reinstated capital punishment in 1994.The 415-page ruling came in the case of John E. Robinson Sr., who was convicted in 2003 of killing seven women and a teenage girl in Kansas and Missouri in cases dating back to 1984. Investigators said he lured some victims with promises of work or sex, and stuffed some of their bodies in barrels on his rural property.The court had faced criticism for overturning death sentences, but only one of the court’s seven justices dissentedin Friday’s ruling. District Attorney Steve Howe in Johnson County, where Robinson’s case was tried, said the ruling marks a shift in how the court handles death penalty cases.“My expectation is that, as we move forward, these cases will move at a faster pace,” he said.Investigators said Robinson used the Internet to lure two victims to Kansas: 27-year-oldSuzette Trouten of Newport, Mich., and Izabela Lewicka, a 21-year-old Polish immigrant who attended Purdue University.Their bodies were found in June 2000, in large barrels on Robinson’s rural property 60 miles south of Kansas City. Two days later, three more bodies were discovered in barrels in a storage locker Robinson rented in the Kansas City area.Robinson is among only nine inmates on death row in Kansas, which has a checkered history with the death penalty. Although the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976, Kansas waited nearly 20 years before reinstating it.Five of the state’s current death row inmates had their sentences overturned by the Kansas Supreme Court, but the cases have since been appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court or sent to lower courts for resentencing. The other three inmates have not had first rulings from the Kansas Supreme Court.Robinson was sentenced to death for killing Lewicka and Trouten under a state law allowing capital punishment for multiple, premeditated killings that were part ofa “common scheme or course of conduct.”The court’s lengthy decision — which dealt with dozens of technical issues raised by Robinson’s attorneys on appeal — upheld the death sentence that resulted from Robinson’s capital murder conviction for Trouten’s death in 2000.During the same trial, Robinson also was convicted of capital murder for the 1999 slaying of Lewicka and of non-capital murder in the 1985 death of Lisa Stasi, a 19-year-old whose body has never been found.The Supreme Court reversed those two convictions, saying Kansas’ death penalty law allowed for only one capital murder charge covering multiple killings in the overall case. But that ruling “in no way” cleared Robinson in the deaths, Justice Caleb Stegall wrote in the majority’s opinion.Robinson
Newspaper Details
Lawrence Journal World
Lawrence, Kansas, US
Sat, Nov 07, 2015
Page 6
Full Page
Clipped by
Ekelly H.
CA 16 Jan 2020
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