KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly announced the denial of a request for commutation of the death sentence from a man convicted of killing multiple women.
John E. Robinson, Sr.’s was sentenced with the death penalty for killing six women in the 1980s.
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“As the existence of a credible claim of innocence or evidence of manifest injustice are absent in his request, I have denied John Robinson’s request to commute his death sentence,” a press release from the governor’s office said.
Robinson was seeking life imprisonment without the possibility of parole in place of his death sentence, according to a press release.
“John Robinson is almost 83 years old, one of the oldest death row prisoners in America. Given his age, his medical condition, and his ongoing legal proceedings, it is nearly certain that he will die of natural causes before Kansas is in a position to execute him,” an attorney for Robinson said in a statement Thursday. “By denying him clemency, Gov. Kelly has ensured that the State must continue to waste vast resources defending his death sentence instead of resolving the case with a sentence of life without parole.”
Robinson’s attorney also said “egregious errors” in his case could result in the overturning of his death sentence.
His case is currently pending in the state supreme court on a post-conviction appeal.
The Kansas death penalty was reinstated in 1994.
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