OREGON CITY, Ore. — With prosecutors asking that serial killer Dayton Leroy Rogers be sentenced to death for a fourth time, defense attorneys Friday asked jurors to give him life in prison to bring final resolution to a three-decades-old legal process.
Rogers has been sentenced to death three times, and each time the sentence has been overturned on various legal grounds.
One of Oregon’s most prolific serial killers, Rogers tortured and killed several women in the 1980s, binding some of them, stabbing them repeatedly and in several cases cutting off their feet or other body parts.
Now 62, quiet and balding, the former lawn-mower repairman was dubbed the Molalla Forest Killer because the bodies were discovered in a forest in the small town of Molalla.
During Rogers’ current sentencing trial in Clackamas County Circuit Court, defense attorney Richard L. Wolf said Rogers would waive his right to an appeal if he got a sentence of life without the possibility of parole.
Wolf said sending Rogers to prison for life would give a resolution to victims’ families and avoid costs of more legal proceedings. If Rogers is sentenced to death, Wolf said, various appeals could take up another 30 years, cost about $3 million and continue to drag families into court.
“We stand before you today not to deny or excuse Mr. Rogers’ crimes,” Wolf told the jury. “We’re asking you … to stop the endless courtroom proceedings and permit (the families) to finally move forward, rather than seemingly move forward then backward … stuck in a never-ending cycle of trial and automatic appeal.”
Wolf said Rogers had only four minor infractions during the past 27 years in prison. The possibility he’ll be a victim in prison is much greater than that of him victimizing others, Wolf said.
Wolf also argued Rogers’ traumatic childhood — including sexual and physical abuse — and the brain damage he suffered should be considered as mitigating evidence.
Prosecutor Bryan Brock said Rogers should get the death penalty because his acts were heinous and deliberate. He carefully planned his attacks and was driven by sexual gratification from inflicting pain, Brock said.
Rogers was a “patient and cunning individual” who lived a double life, Brock said. On one hand, he had a wife, son, owned a house in Woodburn, attended church and ran a successful small business. On the other, he drove to Portland to solicit prostitutes, plied them with alcohol, and took them to remote locations where he tied them up, violently bit them and cut them.
Those who resisted were killed and had their feet cut off while still alive, said Brock. He showed the jury a hacksaw recovered from Rogers.
“Violence equals pleasure. He cut off their feet for his pleasure,” said Brock, adding that Rogers later burned the dead women’s clothes in his stove and cleaned out his blood-soaked truck.
Brock said Rogers, who has spent most of the past 27 years in prison segregation, was a sexual sadist unfit to live in the general prison population.
Rogers was convicted of six killings in 1989, and each of three juries has sentenced him to death.
The state Supreme Court struck down his death sentences in 1992, 2000 and 2012. The first time was to comply with a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that invalidated Oregon’s death penalty law. In 2000, the Oregon high court ruled that the jury incorrectly considered only the options of death and life in prison with the possibility of parole. There should have been a third choice: life without the chance of parole.
In 2012, the justices said jury selection was done improperly and the judge incorrectly allowed evidence of Rogers’ gay experiences as a teenager.
