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Rape, murder defendant seeks death penalty

Mental fitness tests planned after plea

By Art Barnum
Tribune staff reporter
10:31 PM CST, December 11, 2007

An Oakbrook Terrace-area man told a judge Tuesday that he wanted to plead
guilty and accept the death penalty for the rape and murder on Christmas Day
last year of a woman he had known since childhood.

Robert Rejda, 26, listened calmly as DuPage County Public Defender Robert
Miller explained his wishes to Judge Michael Burke.

"He knows that there is nothing he can do," Miller said. "He doesn't want to
make this worse for anyone. He is aware that he has a fundamental right to
plead guilty."

The judge declined to immediately accept the plea. Legal experts said the
fact Rejda is not trying to avoid the death penalty is rare and may be
unprecedented in Illinois.

"Mental health tests are necessary because of these special circumstances,"
Burke said. Both he and Miller would request such exams.

State's Atty. Joseph Birkett agreed the defendant should be examined
further. "To plead to a death penalty calls for such a test," Birkett said.
Assistant State's Atty. Michael Wolfe added that the state Supreme Court has
sought the tests in instances of guilty pleas in capital cases.

The mental fitness reports are expected to completed in January, Burke said.
If Rejda is deemed mentally fit to enter a plea, Burke would schedule a
mandatory death-penalty eligibility hearing, followed by a sentencing
hearing, the judge said.

Until he is sentenced, Rejda will have the right to change his mind about
his guilty plea and accepting the death penalty. All Illinois death penalty
cases are automatically appealed to the Illinois Supreme Court.

Miller said he still plans to prepare a defense designed to help his client
avoid the death penalty.

"I have told Mr. Rejda that," Miller said. "If he wants, he has the right to
another attorney."

Rejda wants Miller to remain on the case, Burke said.

During Tuesday's half-hour hearing in Wheaton, Rejda answered yes when asked
by Burke if he understood what Miller was saying, that he agreed with the
plea and had authorized it.

Rejda is charged with first-degree murder in the death of Lauren Kiefer, 24,
of unincorporated Oakbrook Terrace. Family members discovered her beaten
body in her home Christmas Day as they returned from a party.

Rejda was arrested a short time later, after his DNA was identified at the
crime scene, authorities said.

In July, prosecutors said they would seek the death penalty. Birkett said
the death penalty was appropriate because Kiefer was murdered during the
course of aggravated criminal sexual assault, home invasion and residential
burglary.

Kiefer was a 2005 graduate of Columbia College in Chicago and had worked as
a model in clothing ads. She and Rejda had attended grade school together,
but Birkett said there was no romantic link.

Henry Kiefer, the victim's father, who has attended all court proceedings,
declined to comment Tuesday.

Rejda's request is unusual, legal experts said.

"Normally, you almost never see a guilty plea for a death penalty," said Rob
Warden, executive director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at
Northwestern University Law School. "It's exceedingly rare."

Defendants sometimes will seek an agreement with prosecutors to plead guilty
to a crime in exchange for a lighter sentence, such as life in prison, and
avoid the death penalty. In cases in which a plea agreement cannot be
reached, some defendants enter a blind plea, pleading guilty with no
agreement on the sentence in hopes the judge will impose a lighter sentence
anyway.

Four people in Illinois-Hernando Williams, Charles Walker, Lloyd Hampton and
Walter Stewart-have been executed after making blind guilty pleas.

"I'm not aware, offhand, of any case where the defendant said, 'I want to
plead guilty, and I want the death penalty,' " said Charles Schiedel, deputy
defender of the state appellate defender's Supreme Court unit.

Giving up negotiating power is the defendant's decision, Schiedel said. By
law, the trial court must hold a hearing to examine the aggravating and
mitigating evidence, and the state Supreme Court must review the case, he
said. But Rejda can choose not to pursue appeals beyond that review.

If he waives further appeals, Rejda would be the 11th defendant to be
sentenced to the death penalty since former Gov. George Ryan placed a
moratorium on the punishment in 2003, Warden said.

The DuPage County legal system dealt with a similar issue a decade ago, when
Guinevere Garcia was sentenced to death for murdering her husband after
having served a prison sentence for murdering her infant child.

She appealed her conviction and sentence, but eventually, she asked that all
further appeals be halted and that she be executed. On Jan. 16, 1996, just
14 hours before the scheduled execution, then-Gov. Jim Edgar ordered that
she serve a life sentence.

abarnum@tribune.com
Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune