Killer to get wish: Death

JoyK · **Posted:** Thu Jul 26, 2007 10:08 pm

Killer to get wish: Death

Michael Kiefer and Judi Villa
The Arizona Republic
May. 20, 2007 12:00 AM

Robert Comer waived his right to appeal his death sentence.

But if he allows himself to be strapped to a gurney and put to death, it will be one of the few cooperative moments of his life.

Comer, 50, has been on death row for almost 20 years. On Tuesday, he will be the first man executed in the state since November 2000.

His death sentence was imposed for the brutal murder of a Florida man at an Arizona campground in 1987. Comer also is serving 339 years for rape and kidnapping.

He refused to attend his own trial and had to be wheeled into court in a wheelchair, wearing only boxer shorts and a blanket.

His Arizona prison record comprises three fat files of disciplinary actions for countless weapons found in his cell, countless refusals to do what he was told and countless threats made to correction officers.

He says he wants it all over with.

"He's been pretty steadfast all along," his attorney Michael Kimerer said. "What he's wanted since 2000 is to waive his appeals and proceed with the execution."

Kimerer, who opposes the death penalty, said that he has reminded Comer along the way that he could have changed his mind.

"We've had long talks about that, but he hasn't wavered a bit in wanting to proceed with his course of action," Kimerer said.

Comer refused interview requests from The Republic. But prison officials said that he has said his goodbyes to his fellow inmates, telling them not to be upset when he is gone because he made his own choices, many of them bad ones.

"All-American boy"

Robert Charles Comer was born Dec. 14, 1956, in San Jose, one of four sons of Charles Comer.

His former defense attorney, Roland Steinle, who is now a Maricopa County Superior Court judge, said that Comer was an "all-American boy" until his teens.

But little is known about Comer's life because he would never cooperate with investigators.

Steinle knew little else about Comer.

"As long as I stayed away from his family, he cooperated with me," Steinle said.

According to court records, Comer dropped out of 10th grade when he was 17 and then got a GED. He married and had two children, though their whereabouts are unknown. He worked as a carpenter. And he was honorably discharged from the U.S. Army after serving just six months.

In 1979, he was sent to Folsom Prison in California to serve 7½ years for rape and assault with a deadly weapon. At the time, he told probation officers that he was an alcoholic and a heroin addict and had taken LSD at least 500 times.

Steinle said that Comer became a White supremacist in prison and came out hardened and mean and covered with tattoos.

Deadly crime spree

Comer couldn't follow the rules. He was wanted for parole violations in 1987, when at 31, he left Sacramento with a woman named Juneva Willis, her two children, less than $500 and a truck he had stolen from a man he said he killed in California.

They traveled through four states over the next few weeks. In February, they arrived at a campground near Apache Lake, east of Phoenix in the Tonto National Forest.

One night they ate dinner with Larry Pritchard, 43, a disabled emergency medical technician from Florida who was camping at the neighboring site. The next morning, Comer shot Pritchard in the side of the head. "See what I've done?" Comer told Willis. "I'm a cold and callous killer." Comer took Pritchard's gear, his money and even his dog.

He "relished the killing," the sentencing judge would later write in his verdict.

That night, Comer and Willis burst into the camp of a man and woman from Chicago and told them he was a DEA agent.

He robbed them and drove them at gunpoint in their own truck. When the woman asked him to stop so she could go to the bathroom, Comer sexually assaulted her.

Then he tied the boyfriend to the fender of his truck and made him watch as he raped the woman. When the truck mired in a wash, he left him bound and tied in the desert and fled with the woman, Willis and the children in the other truck. He repeatedly raped the woman. He shot and killed Pritchard's dog.

But when the truck ran out of gas on the eastern flank of Four Peaks, north of Roosevelt Lake, the woman escaped, running off into the chaparral in her stocking feet.

After 23 hours she reached the town of Punkin Center. Two days later, law enforcement officers used tracking dogs to find the camp on the mountainside where Comer and Willis had holed up.

Deputy Chief Larry Black of the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office remembers the arrest. Comer was wild-looking, he said. His hair "shot out every which way."

"He never said a word," Black said. "He was pretty much quiet, like he had been through the routine before. He was very distant. He had a very stone look to his face."

Acts of defiance

Comer refused to attend his 1988 trial for rape, murder and kidnapping before Superior Court Judge Ronald Reinstein.

"We actually went to the jail with my whole staff," Reinstein said, so that Comer could waive his right to be present.

When Comer later refused to leave his cell to attend his sentencing, jail officials blasted him loose with a fire hose and dragged him to court wearing only boxer shorts and a blanket. He sported prison tattoos, black hair reaching his shoulders and a bushy beard.

Reinstein greeted him.

"Let's get it on," Comer replied.

Reinstein sentenced him to death. Willis was sentenced to 9 1/2 years in prison for kidnapping.

Comer has admitted to killing a man in California, but he was never prosecuted for the murder because the body was never found. After his conviction in the Arizona case, Steinle, his former defense attorney, visited Comer in prison at the request of law enforcement officials to see if he would reveal where the body was. Comer refused.

Steinle believed that Comer's refusal to continue his appeals against the death penalty was in keeping with his character.

But Comer's wishes to die forced the courts to review his mental competency.

"The idea that someone who accepts responsibility for his crimes is crazy is ludicrous," said Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas, a strong advocate for the death penalty. "It is a sad but telling commentary on our criminal-justice system that 20 years after Robert Comer committed murder, the only reason he's going to be executed is because he gave up his endless rights to appeal. This case tells you everything you need to know about what's wrong with the system."

But some say that time is a necessary price to pay for justice. The ultimate penalty demands that the ultimate scrutiny be paid.

"We've learned over the last few years that the criminal-justice system errs," said Larry Hammond, a Phoenix attorney and head of the Arizona Justice Project. In a recent letter to the attorneys in his case, Comer ranted at the anti-death-penalty types who tried to further postpone his execution.

In March, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed that Comer was competent. The case returned to the state, which petitioned the Arizona Supreme Court for the death warrant issued on April 17.

On Thursday, that court denied a last-minute motion for stay of execution filed by an anti-death-penalty group.

On Tuesday, Comer will be strapped to a gurney shortly before 10 a.m. Tubes will be inserted, and three chemicals will be pumped into his body.

Comer will fulfill his death wish.

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepubli ... comer.html

Marion · **Posted:** Sat Jul 28, 2007 5:13 pm

Arizona must stop its execution policy

GRETCHEN NIELSEN
Tucson Citizen
05.17.2007

Robert Comer, found guilty of murder in 1988, has asked the court to stop all appeals and has volunteered to be put to death Tuesday by the people of Arizona.

This would be our state's first act of legal homicide in nearly seven years.

Years ago, our thirst for revenge made us a collective killer. But as we have become more aware, our primary reason for executing prisoners is our fear that a killer will be released to kill again.

When advised that the alternative is life in prison without possibility of parole, only 41 percent of us continue to support execution, according to the Behavior Research Center.

We are growing up fast, and it's time for the majority of the people to insist the death penalty be abolished.

We need laws appropriate for our stage of development.

Killing because we are opposed to killing is like stealing because we are opposed to theft.

We cannot teach killers that killing is wrong by killing them. We cannot teach our children that killing is wrong by being killers ourselves.

Executing a prisoner is simply an act of revenge and a display of our failure as good guys.

Revenge feels wonderful. It's a high. And when we knew a lot about the crime, and little or nothing about the suspect, we have been moved to condemn the mentally ill, the retarded, even the innocent, in our lynch mob eagerness to find somebody to blame and punish.

After what we considered a "fair trial," an execution has felt like justice ("closure" is the modern term) because we didn't know the person we killed.

We were never given the information that might lead us to hate the crime and have mercy for the criminal.

We still usually get a lopsided "two sides of the story" from the media as emotionally charged as a simplistic good-guy/bad-guy drama.

Especially in matters of life and death, we need everyday media that write and speak to the responsible adults we are becoming.

Members of the 41 percent who directly or tacitly support taking the lives of fellow human beings have the duty as citizens of a democracy to study those lives in depth.

Have their brains been infused prenatally with alcohol or other drugs? What blows have they received from the world that helped to form them?

If the state did not hire a "hit man" to kill them, would you kill them by your own hand?

I plan to stand with others who oppose the execution before, during and, if the people of Arizona go through with it, after the event.

Comer wants to die, but I don't want to kill him. Not in my name.

Gretchen Nielsen's poetry, opinions and letters have been published in more than two dozen newspapers and magazines.

Marion · **Posted:** Sat Jul 28, 2007 5:13 pm

Group wants execution of killer halted

Michael Kiefer
The Arizona Republic
May. 17, 2007 12:00 AM

An anti-death-penalty group out of Tucson filed a motion in the Arizona Supreme Court on Wednesday afternoon to stop the execution of a murderer who has already waived his rights to further appeals.

Robert Comer, 50, who shot a camper to death at Apache Lake in 1987, is scheduled to die by lethal injection on Tuesday. He will be the first inmate on Arizona's Death Row to be executed since November 2000.

But attorney Jennifer Bedier of the Arizona Capital Representation Project filed a motion for a stay of execution, citing two issues.

She questioned whether he was fully conscious at his sentencing and whether his appearance pushed the limits of decency because he was forcibly brought to court while wearing only boxer shorts and a blanket after being roughed up in jail (the motion mistakenly said he was naked).

Secondly, according to her motion, lethal injection is cruel and unusual punishment.

When Comer made clear his desire to be executed in 2000, it raised questions as to his competency. But the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in March took a second look at the matter, including the circumstances of Comer's sentencing, and determined that he was competent.

The Arizona Supreme Court issued a death warrant in April. And Comer, as recently as April, reiterated his wish to die in letters to the attorneys involved in the case.

Bedier's motion, however, says that Comer's wishes do not matter.

"Regardless of whether Mr. Comer wants to die, Arizona should not execute him until Arizona has enacted a proper protocol which is likely not to involve torturing inmates to death," she wrote.

Responding for the state, Assistant Arizona Attorney General Kent Cattani said that Comer was entitled to make his own decision and that the Tucson group had no standing in the case.

Marion · **Posted:** Sat Jul 28, 2007 5:14 pm

Arizona Bishops speak out against pending execution

Indian Catholic
May 19,2007

PHOENIX (CNA): The Bishops of the Arizona Catholic Conference, in a statement released today, are speaking out in opposition to the death penalty in light of the pending May 22 scheduled execution of Robert Charles Comer.

Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted of Phoenix, Bishop Gerald F. Kicanas of Tucson, and Bishop Donald E. Pelotte of Gallup, NM, state that life in prison without parole is a means to punish criminals and protect society without resorting to capital punishment. “State-sanctioned killing, whether by unnecessary use of the death penalty or by the intrinsically evil actions of abortion and euthanasia, violates human life and dignity,” the Bishops said.

“There is no doubt that the state has an obligation to promote the common good by punishing criminals and preventing the recurrence of crime. Furthermore, those who commit brutal crimes such as murder are certainly deserving of a punishment proportionate to the gravity of their offense. However, we believe that the state should not respond to the violence of brutal crimes with the violence of capital punishment.”

The bishops also invoked the teaching of Pope John Paul II on the death penalty. “When there are means available to punish criminals and protect society from the recurrence of crime (e.g., life in prison without parole), the use of capital punishment is both unnecessary and undesirable. “Because these means exist, the use of capital punishment should be limited only to extremely rare situations where it is necessary to defend society (Evangelium Vitate, #56).”

Also of great concern, is the potential for the wrongful conviction of an innocent person. “Over the past two decades more than 200 people have been wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death in our country, only to be later released after DNA evidence proved their innocence.”

The full text of the statement from the Arizona Catholic Conference Bishops is available at www.azcatholicconference.org.

Marion · **Posted:** Sat Jul 28, 2007 5:14 pm

Comer execution set for 10 a.m.

Tucson Citizen
05.22.2007

Arizona's first execution in seven years is scheduled to take place Tuesday at 10 a.m.

Robert Charles Comer, 50, shot Larry Pritchard to death at a campground near Apache Lake on Feb. 23, 1987. He and his girlfriend then went to another campsite, where Comer tied up a woman and raped her before abducting a male camper, who later escaped.

Comer has been seeking to end the appeals process since 2000, according to the Department of Corrections. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted his request to withdraw his federal appeals early this year.

Comer has requested a last meal of fried okra, four buns, lots of butter and salt and two slices of banana bread.

He chose to be executed by lethal injection.

There are 112 inmates on death row in the Arizona State Prison Complex-Florence.

Marion · **Posted:** Sat Jul 28, 2007 5:14 pm

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL USA
PRESS RELEASE

May 21, 2007

Robert Comer Execution is State-Sanctioned Suicide, Says Amnesty International

(New York) -- Larry Cox, executive director of Amnesty International USA, released the following statement today regarding the scheduled execution of Robert Comer in Arizona on Tuesday, May 22:

"Robert Comer has given up his appeals and has 'volunteered' to be executed by the state. But a decision by someone under an imminent threat of death can never be truly 'voluntary' -- and this execution date should never have been set. No matter which way the state would like to spin it, there is no disguising the fact that this is state-sanctioned suicide."

"It has been well documented that Comer has suffered from a major depressive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder and SHU (Segregated Housing Unit) syndrome. It is unconscionable that an individual suffering from such severe mental illness is deemed 'competent' to give up his appeals. It's ironic that a state does all it can to prevent inmates from committing suicide while simultaneously carrying out an execution of a 'volunteer' -- in essence, aiding and abetting an inmate's death wish.

"Arizona's move to execute Robert Comer stands against the national trend of questioning the death penalty and moving away from it. This execution is a macabre act that takes Arizona a step backwards."

# # #
For more information on Amnesty International's work against the death penalty, please visit: www.amnestyusa.org/abolish

Marion · **Posted:** Sat Jul 28, 2007 5:15 pm

Prison gearing up for Comer execution

Michael Kiefer and Judi Villa
The Arizona Republic
May. 21, 2007 09:27 AM

Florence is gearing up today for a surge in visitors, media and protestors who are preparing for Arizona's first execution in nearly seven years.

Robert Comer is set to die by leathal injection at 10 a.m. Tuesday. In 1987 Comer was sentenced to death for murdering a Florida man at an Arizona campground, and raping a woman while making her boyfriend watch.

Comer, 50, has been on death row for nearly 20 years and waived his right to further appeals so he could die.

Later today, Comer will be given his last meal. He requested fried okra, four buns, butter, salt and two slices of banana bread.

Marion · **Posted:** Sat Jul 28, 2007 5:16 pm

Execution 1st in Ariz. in years

112 inmates linger on state's death row as cases wade through court system

Michael Kiefer and Judi Villa
The Arizona Republic
May. 22, 2007 12:00 AM

Arizona judges and juries have never been shy about imposing the death sentence.

There are 112 men and women on Arizona's death row, some of whom have lingered there for more than 20 years as their cases struggle through state and federal courts.

Although Arizona was among one of the most active states to carry out executions in the late 1990s, no one has been put to death here since November 2000.

When Robert Comer is laid on a gurney in Florence today, he will be the first person executed in nearly seven years - and only because he went to court to earn the right to die.

Why have there been so few executions this decade and what takes so long?

A pair of U.S. Supreme Court cases shut down executions in Arizona for at least four years. And backlogs in the state and federal courts have slowed case movement to a trickle.

Comer, 50, has waited nearly 20 years to die. In 1987, he killed a man at a campground near Apache Lake, then raped a woman in front of her boyfriend. He was sentenced to death in 1988. When he petitioned the courts to let him waive his appeals in 2000, it set off hearings to determine whether he was sane.

"It's human nature to want to live," said Robert Storrs, veteran capital defense lawyer. "People can make a rational choice to die. But anytime someone does, you have to make sure it's not because of mental illness."

In the late 1990s, Arizona was in the forefront of states that executed murderers. Four prisoners were put to death in 1998, seven in 1999 and three in 2000.

But during that time, the U.S. Supreme Court was reinventing the way that sentences were imposed with a pair of rulings saying that juries and not judges should determine if a defendant deserved a harsher, or "aggravated," sentence. Prosecutors and defense attorneys across the country waited for the right case to test how that theory would be applied to capital cases.

It came from Arizona.

In January 2002, the high court agreed to hear the case of Timothy Ring, who had been sentenced to death for killing an armored-car driver in Phoenix in 1994. That June, the justices issued their ruling in the case, which said that juries, not judges, should decide whether there were aggravating factors to warrant the death penalty.

Arizona went one step further in rewriting its death penalty statute so that juries not only determined aggravating factors but also the sentence.

The Ring decision affected five states that did not have jury determination in death penalty trials: Arizona, Nebraska, Colorado, Montana and Idaho.

Those states, unlike Arizona, have very few people on their death rows. But executions did not start up immediately, because no one knew whether the ruling was retroactive. Then, in 2004, the Supreme Court ruled in another Arizona case that courts only needed to re-examine those cases that had not yet gone through the first stage of appeals.

In Arizona, that meant 30 convicted killers were removed from death row as their cases were reviewed by the state Supreme Court. Most cases were returned to the lower courts to have juries decide on the death penalty. Many, including Ring's case, are still awaiting new trials.

Lengthy delays

Many Arizona defendants have been on death row for more than 20 years.

One cause of the logjam is there are not enough qualified attorneys to take cases to the second stage of appeal. Nine Arizona cases are on hold at that stage as they await attorneys.

"We just could not find enough attorneys to take these cases in a timely fashion," said Arizona Supreme Court Justice Michael Ryan, who heads a state task force on the death penalty.

"There really isn't a good explanation, in my opinion, for a lengthy delay for a case just to be considered on appeal," said Kent Cattani, who heads the capital litigation section of the Arizona Attorney General's Office and who has lobbied the federal courts to speed up.

Ryan points to the heavy caseload of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and to the efficiency of the local federal Public Defender's Office representing the cases in federal court: 54 in the district court and 21 in the 9th Circuit.

Dale Baich, who heads the staff in that office, said, "The cases are moving. Most of those cases have been sent back either for an evidentiary hearing or a new sentencing."

But there are other factors that affect cases. Since the Ring decision, for example, there have been U.S. Supreme Court decisions stopping executions of juveniles and the mentally retarded. Such rulings open new doors to appeal old cases.

"At some point, a balance between defendants' rights and public safety and justice has to come back to a more reasonable level. And right now the death penalty is effectively being nullified through trial delays and endless appeals," said Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas.

Scrutiny necessary

Some say that time is a necessary price to pay for justice. The ultimate penalty demands that the ultimate scrutiny be paid. Since 1989, 200 men nationwide, including two in Arizona, have been exonerated based on DNA evidence, a development that spurred reform efforts as officials began to realize that there could be other frailties in the criminal justice system. Of those men, 14 had served time on death row.

Eleanor Eisenberg, president of the Death Penalty Forum, an anti-death penalty lobby, recalled the case of Ray Krone, who spent 10 years in prison and nearly three years on Arizona's death row before DNA evidence proved that he didn't commit the murder for which he was accused.

"We don't think we should ever get to execution," Eisenberg said "But if we are going to continue to execute people in this country, then we have to make absolutely sure not that the person is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt as proved at trial, but that it is truly the correct person who committed the crime."

Marion · **Posted:** Sat Jul 28, 2007 5:16 pm

Life goes on in Florence as killer is executed

Lynh Bui
The Arizona Republic
May. 22, 2007 02:02 PM

FLORENCE - At 10 a.m. Tuesday, several things happened in Florence.

On Butte Avenue and Pinal Parkway, George Williams was getting his picture taken by the media.

Across the street 15 protesters bowed their heads in prayer.

And behind a chain-link fence and barbed wire that separated those protesters from the Arizona State Prison, Robert Comer was about to die.

Tuesday at 10 a.m. the state gave a lethal injection to Comer for his role in the 1987 brutal murder of a Florida man at Apache Lake.

He died eight minutes later.

Comer's death was the first execution in seven years for this Pinal County town where the prisoners outnumber the residents by almost three to one.

There was a concentration of activity outside of Arizona's largest state prison.

Cars driving by honked at protestors waving signs while, police officers kept close watch on the crowd.

Donna Leone Hamm with Middle Ground Prison Reform has been to 22 executions. And while brandishing poster board and protesting nearly two-dozen times still hasn't wiped out the death penalty, she still stands firm in her beliefs.

"It doesn't matter who does the killing," Hamm said. "It (the death penalty) is still murder."

Across the street from the protesters, George Williams stood as a crowd of one.

"I'm here to be a member of the other 20 or 30 people who should be standing on this corner."

The East Valley resident drove an hour to Florence to express support for what was going on behind prison walls hundreds of feet away.

"Comer will never murder or kill again," said a sign Williams had crafted with black and red marker on a sheet of white computer paper.

But the small flurry of activity ended about there.

Despite the death of one in Florence, life went on for others.

Nancy Alverez is the maid at the Blue Mist Motel.

She started cleaning room 106 at about 9:15 on Tuesday morning and continued pushing a shopping cart full of towels and bed linens around at the sky blue brick building.

"I didn't know," Alvarez said about Comer's execution. "I don't like it."

At 10 a.m., she had ended up at room 101, still changing sheets and vacuuming the carpet.

Gabrielle Smith was opening the drug store on Main Street when Comer was getting injected with a lethal cocktail of drugs.

Smith, a lifelong Florence resident, said she didn't even think about what was going on less than a mile away.

"You get used to it," Smith said about living in the prison town. "Prisoners escape, schools get locked down. It's just part of Florence."

Marion · **Posted:** Sat Jul 28, 2007 5:16 pm

Letters From Hell

Robert Comer wrote to New Times from prison for years, predicting recently that his soul would be in the real hell "soon enough"

Phoenix New Times
By Paul Rubin
Published: May 24, 2007

Robert "Gypsy" Comer, whose path to death by lethal injection was paved with bad intentions, sent a series of letters to New Times before his execution on the morning of Tuesday, May 22.

"I'm ready, and I've been ready," he wrote from his cell in Florence on April 29, "though I know there are some people out there who are going to fight me until they put the needle in my arm."

Comer was the first person executed in Arizona since November 2000.

Comer's missives remained consistent with what he had been telling attorneys, judges, confidants and New Times for years — that he wanted to waive any remaining appeals and be put to death as soon as possible.

Becoming a death penalty "volunteer" was far more of a legal ordeal than the 50-year-old killer originally envisioned. Along the way, Comer's toughest fight was against his court-appointed habeas lawyers, whose job it was to find legally compelling flaws in their client's trial and sentencing.

Those attorneys tried desperately to convince various state and federal courts ("Arizona's Worst Criminal," May 2, 2002) that Comer had been rendered mentally incompetent to make decisions about his life by his long incarceration at the Arizona Department of Corrections' SMU II unit, a super-maximum-security facility, where isolation from other inmates and other mind-twisting punishments are the norm.

But Comer had presented a credible case for his execution during a memorable March 2002 federal hearing in downtown Phoenix, telling U.S. District Court Judge Roslyn Silver that "[this] has to do with me paying my debt to society. I ended a whole bunch of innocent people's lives, and changed their lives forever. I was sentenced to death. That's the legal sentence."

Silver concluded that Comer was competent, a key finding that moved the long-standing case ahead.

After years of other legal twists and turns, the infamous inmate finally landed on a gurney and poison coursed fatally through his veins, courtesy of the state of Arizona.

It is unlikely that those who weren't in Arizona back in early February 1987 can grasp the level of antipathy and horror that Comer's name conjured. It was then that the California native went on a reign of terror near remote Apache Lake, about 65 miles north of downtown Phoenix.

Then 30, a methamphetamine-fueled Comer shot a disabled camper in the head at close range, then cut his throat, and stole his possessions. He also killed the man's beagle. Later that night, Comer and a female companion (who would serve about six years in prison) came upon a young Chicago couple who were camping.

Comer raped the young woman after binding her boyfriend to the fender of his pickup truck. He left the boyfriend tied to the truck in the desert. He then kidnapped the woman in her vehicle (taking along his companion and her two young children). He continued to sexually assault the Chicago woman over the next several hours.

That vehicle ran out of gas north of Roosevelt Lake, and the young woman miraculously escaped into Tonto National Forest, practically naked. Bloody and bruised, she sought refuge for almost 24 hours, until passers-by found her along Arizona 188 near the little town of Punkin Center, about 40 miles north of Phoenix.

The next day, Maricopa County Sheriff's deputies, aided by tracking dogs, arrested Comer and his companion at a campground in Gila County.

Television cameras recorded the end of the highly publicized manhunt, and the heavily tattooed, feral-looking career criminal reminded many of the infamous Charlie Manson, except that this guy did his own killing instead of leaving it to others.

During his trial, which Comer chose not to attend, the prosecutor called him the "reincarnation of the devil." An appellate court later characterized the statement as excessive but not necessarily inaccurate.

Jail officials rousted Comer from his cell before his sentencing with water from a pressurized fire hose (after he had tried to stick one of his captors with a shank), shackled him, covered with only a blanket and his underpants, to a wheelchair, and took him into court, where he told county Judge Ron Reinstein, "Let's get it on."

The crimes for which Comer went to death row in April 1988 included murder, kidnapping and rape.

Though long known to prison authorities as one of their most troublesome and dangerous inmates (Comer's weapon-making abilities are the stuff of legend among correctional officers), records show that his last infraction came August 30, 2001.

In his letters to New Times, Comer attributed his marked positive change in attitude to courteous corrections officers who treated him with respect and to attorneys Holly Gieszl and Mike Kimerer, who worked on his behalf to expedite the execution.

But he added a cautionary note in a 2002 letter, writing: "I am not Hannibal Lecter, but I'm not that far away from being him, either, under the right circumstances."

Comer adopted a more pensive tone in recent weeks, as the likelihood of his execution became apparent.

"Executions are creepy," he wrote. "Imposed death — violent or at the hands of the state is wrong. Murder is murder, no matter the name you give it . . . I don't believe in Jesus, have no urge to tell anyone to go to Hell (I'll be there soon enough), and telling the families I've destroyed that I'm sorry on my deathbed, no matter how sincere I am, would just be written off as a load of crap.

"So, they will either forgive me of their own accord, or hate me. Hopefully, if they hate me, they will channel that to helping other victims cope. Wish I could help stop the violence. In the end, it's all so very stupid."

In this final letter to New Times, received last week, Comer wrote a postscript to his terrible life.

"Just between you and me, I'm tortured in my mind, in my heart for all the wrong I've done," he wrote. "No matter what was done to me, I had no right to destroy anyone's peace, anyone's life. How could I hurt, destroy like that?"

Marion · **Posted:** Sat Jul 28, 2007 5:17 pm

Killer gets death wish

AZ Central
Judi Villa and Michael Kiefer
May. 22, 2007 11:19 AM

FLORENCE - Robert Comer never flinched Tuesday morning as he was injected with a lethal cocktail of drugs that put him to death.

Comer took a picture of his daughter into the death chamber with him and seemed defiant as he smiled and maintained eye contact with his witnesses as drugs coursed through his body.

His last words were "Go Raiders!" and with that, his smile slowly faded until he passed out. His chest stopped moving after the third drug was given to him.

By 10:08 a.m. he was dead.

Just hours before his execution, Comer told prison workers "I am ready."

Comer's execution was not without controversy. Protesters moved on to prison grounds earlier in the morning to voice their objections over the planned execution. However, the Arizona Department of Corrections officials made sure they could not be seen from the main road.

A group of 17 people from Pax Christi USA drove from Phoenix, formed a circle and prayed the Hail Mary.

"You don't teach not killing by killing," Ruth Zemek said.

Wearing a hat that said "let us not become the evil we despise, abolish the death penalty," Margaret Snider said: "I don't think it accomplishes anything. The crime has been committed. It doesn't make anything well."

However, at least one man from East Valley drove to Florence to support Comer's execution.

"This man can never do it again after 10. He can never kill again. They will be safe from this man," said George Williams, the lone pro-death penalty protester. He held a sign saying "Coomer will never murder or kill again"

Williams said he supports the execution because "prisoners escape, murderers get released, people kill prison guards. But not this one."

Gabrielle Smith, manager of a drug store on Main Street, said she was opening the store at 10 a.m., the same time the execution was to start.

"You get used to it," the lifelong Florence resident said. "Prisoners escape. Schools get locked down. It's just part of Florence."

Death penalty opponents exhausted their efforts to halt Comer's death, with the U.S. Supreme Court refusing to order a stay of execution.

Comer was the first inmate to be put to death in Arizona since 2000.

Nearly 20 years ago Comer was sentenced to death for the brutal killing of a Florida man at a campsite at Apache Lake. He is also serving 339 years for rape and kidnapping.

His execution came after he waived his rights to further appeal.

"This is his day. This is what he's been waiting for since 2000," said Arizona Department of Corrections spokesman Bill Lamoreaux.

Comer was given his last meal of fried okra, buns, butter, salt, and banana bread at the dinner hour, Monday evening.

About 20 people witnessed Comer's execution. Among the witnesses, Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard, State Sen. Ron Gould, R-Havasu City, and officials from Phoenix police, Maricopa County Sheriff's and Pinal County Sheriff's departments.

Comer was given the opportunity to invite witnesses to watch his death. Those witnesses include his attorneys, Michael Kimerer, Holly Gieszl and Amy Byrd, a pen pal he met in prison.

'I made the decision'

This day is a welcome one for Comer, who has fought to be executed since 2000. Comer spent much of that time just proving he is competent to make that decision, saying he owes it to his victims, society and himself.

Comer was convicted in a 1987 crime spree in which he killed a fellow camper at Apache Lake east of Phoenix. He also was convicted of repeatedly raping a female camper the same night, once in front of her boyfriend.

"This is my life. I made the decision to pull my appeals," Comer said, according to transcripts from a 2002 competency hearing. "Remember I stuck a gun in the guy's ear and pulled the trigger, scrambled his brains, right? You sentenced me to die. You have that right in this state. I don't see where the big problem is."

It's hard to believe that the Comer requesting to be put to death is the same man who had to be subdued with a hose, beaten and dragged to his sentencing in 1988.

When he was brought into the courtroom strapped to a wheelchair, he was bloodied, barely conscious and naked except for a towel on his lap. His extensive tattoos, including a swastika, were exposed and his shaggy hair and beard were wild. Comer looked every bit the "monster" and "reincarnation of the devil" the prosecutor said he was.

After being sentenced to death, Comer spent the next 13 years making knives and shanks, fighting with prisoners and guards and setting fires in his own cell. He was cited 43 times between 1988 and 2001 for such infractions.

But since 2001, he hasn't been disciplined once. Guards, psychologists, lawyers and Comer himself say he has matured, mellowed and become more thoughtful during his prison time, particularly after his best friend in prison, Robert Vickers, was executed in 1999.

Comer's lawyer, Kimerer, described Comer as extremely insightful and wise about life. Kimerer said he and Comer have become close over the years and that he will be "extremely sad" to see him go.

K.C. Scull, who prosecuted Comer nearly 20 years ago, said it doesn't matter if Comer has changed.

"He's very cunning, he's very intelligent," Scull said. "I also know he was a very nasty guy, but that doesn't change anything ... Rehabilitation was never a factor in this case. You do things that are so bad, we don't care of you're rehabilitated."

Scull said Comer's case has haunted him, police officers and the surviving victims in the case.

"Everybody's entitled to closure here," especially the woman Comer raped repeatedly back in 1987, Scull said.

"She has to get up every day and think, That S.O.B. is still breathing somewhere and I wonder if he'd come and kill me if he had the chance,' " Scull said.

Comer was the first inmate to be put to death in the state since Donald Miller was executed on Nov. 8, 2000, for helping murder an 18-year-old woman.

---

On the Net:

Arizona Department of Corrections: http://www.azcorrections.gov/

Marion · **Posted:** Sat Jul 28, 2007 5:17 pm

First Arizona Execution In 7 years

May 23, 2007 07:53 PM
KOLD News 13 News Editor Marissa Pasquet

Arizona conducted its first execution in seven years, after administering a lethal injection to Robert Comer. Comer was convicted in a 1987 crime spree in which he killed a fellow camper at Apache Lake east of Phoenix. Additionally, he was also convicted of repeatedly, brutally raping a female camper the same night, in front of her boyfriend.

Robert Comer was termed the most dangerous man in the Arizona prison system.

Comer is the first inmate to be put to death in Arizona since Donald Miller was executed November 8, 2000, for participating in the murder of an 18-year-old woman.

The U.S. Supreme Court refused a stay of execution Monday, May 14, 2007, for convicted murderer Comer, who died by lethal injection Tuesday.

A stay of execution filed by Attorney Denise Young was denied last week.

Kent Cattani, chief counsel in the capital litigation section of the Attorney General's Office, filed a response to the high court on Friday, May 18, 2007, arguing that Young did not have the standing to request the stay of execution. "Robert Charles Comer was found competent and voluntarily waived all further legal proceedings," Cattani wrote to the court.

In 2000, Comer began requesting to be put to death, saying he owed it to his victims, himself and society. Much of his fight was spent proving he was competent to make that decision.

"An eye for an eye," Comer once said in court. "I mean, I ended a whole bunch of innocent people's lives and changed their lives forever. Even though they're still alive, their lives are destroyed. I owe that to them. I owe it to myself, man. I was totally wrong."

No other pending actions in court Monday afternoon could delay Comer's execution.

Comer's cell on death row in Florence measured 7 feet by 11.5 feet. An expert psychiatrist commented it was one of the most physically isolating places he'd ever seen.

Robert C.Comer, 50, stated from the start he wanted to die as soon as possible. His attorneys, however, argued he was not qualified to make that decision. Lawyers convinced the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that prison conditions were part of the reason Comer embraced death after years of fighting it.

Attempts to stop his execution had been fought by death-row inmate Comer for years.

Marion · **Posted:** Sat Jul 28, 2007 5:18 pm

Was Arizona’s execution earlier this week botched too?

Capital Defense Weekly
May 26, 2007

Attention has been riveted to the horribly botched “execution” of Christopher Newton. The execution team took over an hour to fine a vein to suitable enough to kill Newton. In the sixteen minutes he took to die “Newton’s stomach heaved, his chin quivered and twitched, and his body twice mildly convulsed within its restraints. Records show that other Ohio inmates died within an average of 7.5 minutes.” Ohio DoC is saying the execution was not a botch (and therefore will do no follow-up, such as an autopsy) , despite experts opinions to the contrary that it was likely a botch with at least the paralytic agent not having been delivered in sufficient dosage.

It appears that the Arizona execution of Robert Comer also experienced unanticipated problems, including a possible cut-down procedure. A poster was kind enough to note, despite very little press coverage:

In Arizona, Comer’s execution may have been botched. They used a catheter in the groin, which is not described in the protocol, and which could have been the result of a painful medical “cut-down” procedure (where a prison guard, apparantly, cuts into the groin to gain access to femoral vein and then clamps a catheter onto the vein).

We won’t know the extent of the problems there, though, because Arizona — incredibly — lays a sheet over the inmate up to the neck before allowing the witnesses to see him. Comer could have been stuck as many times, and Arizona would have covered it up — literally.

The last lethal injection with a groin insertion that I recall is Benny Demps in Florida.

Killer to get wish: Death

Who is online