By Steve Mayes
The Oregonian
PORTLAND, Ore. — Although Dayton Leroy Rogers committed some of the most horrific murders in Oregon history, he poses almost no risk of future violence if he leaves death row and enters the general prison population, a psychologist testified Thursday.
Rogers, a prolific serial killer, was convicted of fatally stabbing seven women in 1987. A jury in 1989 sentenced him to die. But the Oregon Supreme Court has overturned death sentences for Rogers three times, most recently in 2012.
He again faces a 12-person jury that will decide his fate in Clackamas County Circuit Court.
In death penalty cases, Oregon law requires a jury to unanimously agree on four questions. If any juror votes “no” on one question, Rogers cannot be sentenced to death.
Rogers’ attorneys, aiming to avoid another death sentence, are focused on one of those questions: Is Rogers likely to commit future criminal acts of violence?
Forensic psychologist Thomas Reidy offered jurors a mountain of studies and statistics to support his conclusion that Rogers is highly unlikely to assault anyone.
Research shows that prosecutors and juries fare poorly when predicting the likelihood of a convict committing future violent acts, Reidy said.
Studies in Oregon, other states and federal prisons have found that inmates serving life without parole or who once were on death row then released into the general prison population commit serious offenses at much lower rates than other inmates.
Clackamas County prosecutors maintain that Rogers is a dangerous predator who will delay gratification while he identifies a victim, plots an attack and waits for an opportunity to act. Given Rogers’ bloody history, he should be kept on death row to minimize his opportunity to kill again, prosecutors said.
Reidy cited a study of Oregon juries who decided 115 aggravated murder cases between 1985 and 2008. Juries were wrong about 90 percent of the time when they predicted a defendant would commit future violent acts, he said.
Certain factors that apply to Rogers -- an anti-social personality disorder, being convicted of one or more murders, serving life without parole – are not good indictors of future violent acts in prison, Reidy said.
Statistically, he said, people sentenced to death or life without parole are less likely to violate prison rules and their likelihood of committing violent acts decreases dramatically with age.
Rogers, 62, has had four minor disciplinary infractions during his 28 years in custody, Reidy noted.
Prosecutor Bryan Brock argued that as inmates age, they get more clever. “As you get older, you get caught less,” Brock said. Many prison crimes, such as sexual assault, go unreported, he said.
Rogers also has been under close supervision at the Oregon State Penitentiary and has had fewer opportunities to harm anyone, Brock said.
Rogers targeted Portland prostitutes who were heroin addicts. He would persuade them to drink alcohol with him then accompany him to a remote location outside Molalla where he would hog-tie them, torture them and sometimes murder them.
“Mr. Rogers was certainly violent when a very specific set of circumstances were in place: traveling with women in a vehicle to isolated places and while under the influence of intoxicants and being sexually aroused,” defense attorney Lynne Morgan told jurors in her opening statement earlier this week.
Absent those conditions “Rogers can be managed safely in prison” as he has been for the last 28 years, Morgan said.