DOVER, Del. (AP) - A convicted killer involved in a cold-blooded armored car robbery that led to changes in Delaware’s death penalty law is again asking the state Board of Pardons to commute his life prison sentence.
The commutation request by Kenneth L. Rodgers Jr. is included on the agenda for Thursday’s board meeting but will not be heard in public.
A spokesman for the Department of State, which oversees the board, said the panel will review the application during executive session. The board could decide to deny the application administratively or schedule an in-person or video hearing for further consideration at a later date.
“We - and the victims’ families - are opposed,” Department of Justice spokesman Mat Marshall said in an email.
The board denied a commutation request from Rodgers in 2016.
Rodgers, 56, is one of four men convicted of robbing and murdering two armored car guards in 1990. The defendants all received life sentences after jurors could not unanimously agree on the death penalty.
Rodgers and codefendants James Llewellyn Jr., 61, Christopher Long, 60, and Paul Robertson, 58, all remain in prison in Delaware.
The killings and sentences so outraged the public that legislators held a special session in 1991 to change Delaware’s death penalty law, giving judges the final say on imposing the death penalty after considering a jury’s recommendation.
In 2016, a majority of justices on Delaware’s Supreme Court declared the state’s death penalty law unconstitutional because it allowed judges too much discretion in sentencing and did not require that a jury find unanimously and beyond a reasonable doubt that a defendant deserves execution. The court also said its decision was a “watershed procedural ruling” that must be applied retroactively.
That decision followed a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in a case from Florida, which had a death penalty law similar to Delaware’s.
On Dec. 12, 1990, an armored car was delivering $613,000 to a Delaware Trust branch office on Route 13 near Wilmington. As guards Vincent Monterosso and Michael Salvatore began moving a handcart with two canvas money bags and several boxes of coins, they were confronted by three men who began shooting at point-blank range before either guard had time to draw his weapon.
The gunmen grabbed the bags of money and fled in a Ryder truck.
Police pursued the truck into Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The chase ended in Swedesboro, New Jersey, when the truck crashed into a water tower. Rodgers, Robertson and Llewellyn were caught while attempting to flee on foot. Long was found inside the rear of the truck.
In 2014, the pardons board refused to consider commutation for Llewellyn.
Thursday’s board agenda also includes a commutation request from Tanasia Greenfield, also known as Tanasia Milligan. Greenfield’s request will be initially considered behind closed doors without a hearing.
Greenfield was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2016 after pleading guilty to second-degree murder in the fatal beating of her 4-year-old daughter.
Police found Autumn Milligan unresponsive in a New Castle motel room shared by her mother, who was a prostitute, and a man named Willie Reeder in August 2014. Reeder was sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison after pleading guilty to felony child endangerment.
State child protection officials had previously conducted four investigations involving Greenfield but determined that repeated complaints of abuse and neglect of her daughter and young son were unsubstantiated.
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