Opinion ID: 2817777
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Rogers’s offenses and trial.

Text: In 1981, Rogers was charged with three counts of murder, as well as larceny and attempted murder. The Nevada Supreme Court described his offenses as follows: On December 3, 1980, Frank and Linda Strode returned from a Thanksgiving trip to their home in an isolated part of Pershing County near Majuba Mountain, where they resided with Frank’s parents, Emery and Mary Strode, and Frank’s sister, Meriam Strode Treadwell. When they entered the parents’ trailer, they found the dead bodies of Emery, Mary and Meriam under a blanket in a bedroom. Emery had been shot three times and stabbed twice with a knife which was left in his chest. A pocket watch discovered in Emery’s shirt pocket had been struck by one of the bullets; the hour hand of the watch was stopped at one o’clock. Mary had been stabbed in the back and shot in the chest. Meriam, whose wrists were bound with an electric cord, died from a single gunshot wound in her back. Emery and Meriam kept daily diaries. The last entry in both diaries ROGERS V. MCDANIEL 5 was recorded on the morning of December 2, 1980. Rogers v. State, 705 P.2d 664, 667 (Nev. 1985) (per curiam). At trial, Rogers presented significant evidence of his strange behavior around the time of the murders. One witness testified that on the day before the murders, he interacted with Rogers, who made “erratic” statements, including telling the witness that “you may not believe it but I’m a good American,” that “I’m on your side,” and that “I would fight for my country.” On the day of the killings another witness testified that Rogers introduced himself as Teepee and said that he lived in a pyramid. That witness further testified that Rogers identified a nearby hill as “Mount Olympus” asked him if he was the one shooting rockets off of “Mount Olympus,” and when the witness denied that he was, Rogers told him, “Somebody is shooting rockets off of Mount Olympus and one of these days it will hit my pyramid and blow me up.” Rogers presented additional evidence that his erratic behavior continued in the period after the murders. Three days after the killings Rogers was refused entry into Canada. Rogers told Canadian officers at the border that he was the emperor or king of North America, and that there was a contract on his life involving the FBI, CIA, motorcycle gangs and the mafia. About a month later, Rogers was arrested in Florida. After his arrest Rogers told the police that “God knew him” and that we are all a part of mother nature. Further, during fingerprinting Rogers wrote on a piece of paper that he “belonged to the government.” 6 ROGERS V. MCDANIEL Rogers also presented the testimony of psychiatrists suggesting that he “was a paranoid schizophrenic at the time of evaluation and that [his] behavior at the time of the commission of the crimes was consistent with psychotic paranoid delusions, schizophrenia and psychosis and that Rogers could not tell right from wrong or the nature and quality of his acts.” Id. at 668. The jury convicted Rogers on all three counts of first-degree murder. At the penalty phase of Rogers’s trial, the prosecution sought to prove several aggravators that would make Rogers eligible for the death penalty. Rogers called no witnesses and presented no evidence, instead relying on the evidence of his mental state presented during the guilt phase. Ultimately, the jury found two aggravators: that “[t]he murder was committed by a person who was previously convicted of a felony involving the use or threat of violence to the person of another,” and that “[t]he murder involved torture, depravity of mind or mutilation of the victim.” The jury found no mitigating factors sufficient to outweigh the two aggravators and imposed the death penalty. On direct appeal, Rogers argued, inter alia, that the aggravating circumstance and related jury instruction, that “[t]he murder involved torture, depravity of the mind, or mutilation of the victim,” was unconstitutionally vague under Godfrey v. Georgia, 446 U.S. 420 (1980). The Nevada Supreme Court rejected this argument, holding that: (1) the jury instruction gave adequate guidance on the meanings of “torture,” “depravity of mind,” and “mutilate;” and (2) “the jury was justified in finding the aggravating circumstance that the victims were tortured and the murders were committed with depravity of mind,” because of the evidence that the Strodes were shot and stabbed repeatedly. Rogers, 705 P.2d ROGERS V. MCDANIEL 7 at 671–72. The Nevada Supreme Court also performed, as required under state law, an independent analysis of the sufficiency of the evidence supporting the two aggravators found by the jury, concluded the evidence was sufficient, and affirmed Rogers’s convictions. Id. at 673.