Conviction
In 2002, Robinson stood trial in Kansas for the murders of Suzette Trouten, Isabella Lewicka, and Lisa Stasi, as well as kidnapping, and the sale of Stasi's baby. After his conviction on all counts, he received the death sentence for the murders of Trouten and Lewicka, and life imprisonment for Stasi's (because she was killed before Kansas reinstated the death penalty). He also received a five-to-20-year prison sentence for "interfering with the parental custody" of Stasi's baby, 20 1/2 years for kidnapping Trouten, and seven months for theft.
After his Kansas convictions, Robinson faced additional murder charges in Missouri, based on the evidence discovered in that state. Missouri is far more aggressive in its pursuit of capital punishment convictions, and Robinson's attorneys were anxious to avoid a trial there. (Kansas has not executed anyone since reinstating its death penalty statute in 1986.) However, Chris Koster, the Missouri prosecutor, insisted as a condition of any plea bargain that Robinson lead authorities to the bodies of Lisa Stasi, Paula Godfrey, and Catherine Clampitt. Robinson, who has never cooperated in any way with investigators, refused. Koster, however, faced pressure to make a deal because his case was not technically airtight. (Among other issues, there was no unequivocal evidence that any of the murders had actually been committed within his jurisdiction.) Robinson, on the other hand, faced pressure to plead guilty to avoid an almost certain death sentence in Missouri, and failing that, yet another capital murder trial back in Kansas.
When it became clear that the women's remains would never be found without Robinson's cooperation, a compromise of sorts was reached: In a carefully scripted plea in October, 2003, Robinson acknowledged only that Koster had enough evidence to convict him of capital murder for the deaths of Godfrey, Clampitt, Bonner, and the Faiths. Though his statement was technically a guilty plea, and was accepted as such by the Missouri court, observers remarked that it was notably devoid of any contrition, or specific acceptance of responsibility. He received a life sentence without possibility of parole for each of the five murders.
Robinson currently remains on death row at the El Dorado Correctional Facility in Kansas, and could become the first convict executed by lethal injection in that state.
Read more about this topic: John Edward Robinson
Famous quotes containing the word conviction:
“I remember my youth and the feeling that will never come back any more—the feeling that I could last for ever, outlast the sea, the earth, and all men; the deceitful feeling that lures us on to joys, to perils, to love, to vain effort—to death; the triumphant conviction of strength, the heat of life in the handful of dust, the glow in the heart that with every year grows dim, grows cold, grows small, and expires—and expires, too soon, too soon—before life itself.”
—Joseph Conrad (1857–1924)
“What can be more soothing, at once to a man’s Pride, and to his Conscience, than the conviction that, in taking vengeance on his enemies for injustice done him, he has simply to do them justice in return?”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)
“Every man’s task is his life-preserver. The conviction that his work is dear to God and cannot be spared, defends him.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)