Attorneys for convicted killer Glen Rogers contend he should be spared from execution next week because of sexual abuse and trafficking he suffered as a child — and are trying to use newly passed legislation to bolster the argument.
With Rogers slated to be executed May 15 in the 1995 murder of a woman in a Tampa motel room, attorneys have argued in an appeal at the Florida Supreme Court that the legislation passed last week would provide “newly discovered evidence” related to sexual abuse and trafficking.
That legislation (SB 1804) could lead to the death penalty for adults who traffic children under age 12 for sexual exploitation. The appeal contends that the legislation “reflects the conscious of Florida’s citizens in protecting children from the manner of abuse that Rogers suffered as a child” and that if such information was presented to a jury, it likely would lead to Rogers receiving a recommendation of a life sentence.
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“Based on the type and extent of sexual abuse Rogers experienced, particularly without the support of intervening parental guidance and protective community bonds, Rogers’ crimes are highly mitigated,” Rogers’ attorneys wrote in a brief filed last week.
But Hillsborough County Circuit Judge Michelle Sisco, in an April 25 ruling, rejected such arguments. Sisco wrote that Rogers, now 62, made unsuccessful arguments about sexual abuse in an earlier appeal and that the legislation is not newly discovered evidence.
Rogers’ attorneys raised the issue about newly discovered evidence after a version of the legislation was proposed in the state House. The final version passed the Legislature last week but has not been signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Sisco wrote that “although defendant argues his current claim is different from his previous claim as it focuses more on the human trafficking aspect as well as the proposed legislation, the court finds (the claim) is merely a variation of the same argument that was previously raised and rejected.”
After Rogers appealed to the Supreme Court, Attorney General James Uthmeier’s office urged justices to reject the arguments. In a brief filed Friday, the state’s lawyers cited a legal precedent and said that “even the enactment of new legislation is not ‘newly discovered evidence.’”
DeSantis on April 15 signed a death warrant for Rogers, who was convicted in the November 1995 stabbing death of Tina Marie Cribbs after they met at a bar.
Rogers stole Cribbs’ car and was later arrested in Kentucky after leading police on a high-speed chase, according to the state’s brief filed Friday. He also was convicted of murdering a woman in California and was a suspect in murders in Louisiana and Mississippi.
The appeal filed at the Supreme Court raised a series of issues, including that using the state’s lethal injection procedure on Rogers likely would violate the U.S. Constitution’s 8th Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment. That argument is based on Rogers having a medical condition known as porphyria and the potential interaction with one of the drugs in the lethal-injection process.
But the appeal goes into extensive detail about sexual abuse that Rogers suffered as a child in Ohio, including saying he was sexually trafficked and made to participate in child pornography. Also, it said he was sexually abused while at the Training Institute of Central Ohio, a juvenile institution.
The appeal, in part, seeks a stay of execution and an order sending the case back to a lower court for an evidentiary hearing.
“Young Rogers was a vulnerable person who was raped, sexually exploited, and trafficked while he was young child with a developing brain,” his attorneys wrote in last week’s Supreme Court brief. “Rogers’s life is literally at stake, and his trial record lacks a complete history of the mitigating circumstances that entitle him to a life sentence.”
