Convicted murderer and rapist Robert Comer was executed by lethal injection May 22 after spending years fighting for his right to end his appeals process.
Comer, 50, who already served several years in California prisons for rape, was arrested in 1987 after murdering a man and repeatedly raping a woman at a camp near Apache Lake.
He was sentenced to die by Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Ronald Reinstein in 1988 after being brought into court in a wheelchair following a violent standoff with jail guards.
On May 17, the Arizona Supreme Court refused a last-minute appeal from a Tucson-based anti-death penalty organization to stop the execution by claiming Comer’s appearance at sentencing violated his constitutional rights.
The Arizona Capital Representation Project also claimed Comer should not be executed because he was at risk of suffering extreme pain from the state-sanctioned use of lethal injection.
The U.S. Supreme Court also refused to intervene, and the Arizona Board of Executive Clemency on May 17 declined a request by the Coalition of Arizonans to Abolish the Death Penalty to reconsider an earlier decision that ruled out a reprieve.
In 2000, Comer sought to fire his federal appeal attorneys, whom he claimed were “anti-death penalty fanatics,” and to proceed with his execution. His goal was achieved in March of 2007 when the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated his death sentence.
Wire reports indicate Comer’s last words were “Go Raiders!” before losing consciousness. He was declared dead at 10:08 a.m.
Amnesty International USA criticized the execution as “state-assisted suicide,” and noted an opinion by a court-appointed psychiatrist that Comer suffered from mental disorders after spending years in severely isolated maximum-security prison units.
“Arizona’s move to execute Robert Comer stands against the national trend of questioning the death penalty and moving away from it,” said Larry Cox, the group’s executive director. “This execution is a macabre act that takes Arizona a step backwards.”
But contrary to the wishes of capital punishment opponents it appears executions will begin to occur more frequently in Arizona. The appeals process has expired for two inmates, Jeffrey Landrigan, 47, and Ronald Williams, 64.
In 1989, Landrigan, strangled and stabbed a male lover in Phoenix after escaping from an Oklahoma prison where he was serving a sentence for murder. Williams, whom Arizona officials are attempting to extradite from West Virginia, faces a death sentence for killing a man during a burglary in Scottsdale in 1981.
Picking up the pace
Comer spent roughly 20 years in prison before his execution, which prosecutors describe as an average span for the capital appeals process, but that time frame could begin to shrink dramatically, said Kent Cattani, chief counsel of the Capital Litigation section of the Arizona Attorney General’s Office.
The Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 provides an accelerated federal capital appeals process for states that grant condemned prisoners competent and adequately compensated attorneys to handle their state-level post-conviction appeals, said Cattani.
“We’ve calculated the (federal) time frames would come out to about three years instead of the 20 years we face in some of these cases,” said Cattani, noting the average federal appeals process lasts 13 to 14 years, compared to a six to seven year span in state courts.
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has not yet allowed Arizona to opt into the streamlined process, but as part of the Patriot Act of 2001, the U.S. attorney general will issue guidelines for states wishing to do so sometime this summer, Cattani said.
With Comer’s execution, 111 inmates remain on Arizona’s death row in Florence and it is likely that number will soon increase. Approximately 140 capital cases are pending in Maricopa County alone and to address that volume the Arizona Supreme Court in February formed the Capital Case Task Force, headed by Justice Michael Ryan.
Prosecutors and capital defense attorneys have blamed each other for the large number of pending cases, but Ryan in February told the Arizona Capitol Times that the state high court could soon become a “death court” from sheer volume of incoming direct appeals granted to defendants sentenced to death by juries in trial courts.
On May 24, the Arizona Supreme Court heard two such appeals from Juan Velasquez and Darrel Peter Pandeli.
Velasquez was sentenced to death in 2004 for the 2001 murder of his girlfriend’s 20-month-old daughter. According to court documents, Liana Sandoval died from brain injuries after suffering repeated abuse from Velasquez. He then wired her body to a piece of concrete and threw it in a canal.
Pandeli killed and mutilated a woman in 1993 and was ordered to die by a Maricopa County Superior Court judge in 1997. In light of the 2002 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Ring v. Arizona, Pandeli was ordered to be re-sentenced by a jury, which imposed a capital sentence in 2006.