THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, February 1, 1995 TAG: 9502010442
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY PERRY PARKS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: GATESVILLE LENGTH: Medium: 84 lines
The man who murdered a Gates County storekeeper and her daughter in August 1990 was sentenced for a second time Tuesday to die for each slaying.
A jury of nine women and three men deliberated for some 90 minutes before returning with the death sentences for Jerry Wayne Conner. That's about the same time a different jury took to reach the same conclusion in the spring of 1991, after Conner was convicted of first-degree murder for the killings.
His original death penalties were overturned on appeal to the North Carolina Supreme Court last year because of a broadening of the questions the defense could ask a prospective juror. Conner was brought back to Gates County Superior Court for a new sentencing hearing.
Jurors rose one by one Tuesday as Resident Superior Court Judge J. Richard Parker called their names, and they affirmed their verdict while Conner stood nearby, staring straight ahead.
The late afternoon verdict followed more than an hour of detailed instructions from Parker and an eloquent, two-hour war of words between attorneys from each side during closing arguments.
District Attorney Frank Parrish, who helped try the original case, cited William Shakespeare, Aristotle and Oliver Cromwell in appealing to the jury for a death sentence.
Parrish also relied on graphic photographs and the 12-gauge, sawed-off shotgun Conner used to shoot Minh Linda Rogers, 42, and Linda Minh Rogers, 16, at Rogers Grocery in the Corner High section of Eure on Aug. 18, 1990.
Conner had chased off prospective customers between 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. by telling them he was a drug agent about to make a bust. He shot Mihn Rogers through the neck at close range, raped and shot Linda Rogers, and robbed the store. Their bodies were found the next morning.
``Surely, surely, this young girl knew she was going to die,'' Parrish told an entranced jury as he recreated Linda Rogers' final moments and recalled the last face the teenager saw.
``It was the face of the man who had raped her. It was the face of the man who was about to snuff out her life with a shotgun.''
Parrish anticipated defense arguments that Conner - who has been diagnosed with several personality disorders - should be spared the death penalty because of his illness. He told jurors that Conner, and not themselves, would be responsible for his death.
``With full knowledge that these were wrong, he set the chain of events that have brought him to this courtroom on Jan. 31, 1995,'' Parrish said. Pausing for effect between each word, Parrish added, ``He-chose-his-fate.''
Court-appointed defense lawyers Kevin Leahy and A. Jackson Warmack Jr., who represented Conner in his original trial, did not contest Conner's responsibility but said several factors should prevent the jury from choosing death.
They referred to the testimony of a Charlottesville psychiatrist who said the combination of Conner's personality disorders - a tendency to fantasize, a psychosexual disorder and an antisocial compulsion - propelled him to commit the murders.
They said the jury should weigh Conner's eventual cooperation with authorities in their investigation and during his imprisonment, as well as his reliability at his former job as a truck driver and his apparent show of remorse for the crimes.
Warmack, in an impassioned plea for mercy, dismissed Parrish's display of crime scene photos as irrelevant to the facts of the case.
``It's an attempt to play on your emotions, to play your violin strings, so to speak,'' Warmack said. ``An attempt to manipulate you.''
Warmack said putting Conner to death would convey the wrong message.
``If you want a child to be truthful, to grow up telling the truth, what do you do? You tell the truth yourself. . . . You lead by example,'' Warmack said. ``If it was wrong for Jerry Conner to do what he did, what's right about executing Jerry Conner?''
Conner's death sentences again will be automatically appealed to the North Carolina Supreme Court, lawyers said. But Parrish said he hopes the case will not return to Gates County.
``I certainly do believe at this point that the defendant received a fair trial,'' Parrish said.
Thanking Parrish after the verdict were several members of the Rogers family, including the victims' ex-husband and father, Tim Rogers, and Tim and Minh Rogers' son, Jeff. The family, mostly from southeastern Virginia, had traveled to Gatesville each day of the two-week hearing.
KEYWORDS: MURDER SHOOTING RAPE SEX CRIME
TRIAL SENTENCING by CNB