Even more
surprising, he's articulate, intelligent and chillingly unsparing
about the evil acts he has committed. "I killed for no good reason
and screwed up the lives of many innocent people," Comer told New
Times in an April 15 interview, the first time he's ever spoken to
the media. "I think it's just time for me to pay the price."
By "price," he means his execution by lethal
injection, and as soon as possible. For more than two years, Comer
has sought permission from a federal court to drop his criminal
appeals, which would expedite his trip to the death house.
But it's uncertain if Comer will get his wish,
because of a cutting-edge legal question raised in June 2000 by the
Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. That court instructed U.S. District
Court Judge Roslyn Silver to determine "whether Mr. Comer's
conditions of confinement [at SMU II] constitute punishment so harsh
that he has been forced to abandon a natural desire to live."
In other words, has Comer's life at SMU II -- as
unrelentingly secure as any penal facility in the nation -- so
twisted his thinking that he's incapable of making a rational
decision about his own survival? "We have grave concerns that a
mentally disturbed man may be seeking the court's assistance in
ending his life . . ." the appellate court wrote.
Comer's appellate attorneys agree he's
incompetent to drop his own appeals, mostly because of years in
isolation at SMU II. They claim Comer is trying to commit suicide at
the state's hands. The inmate counters that attorneys Peter
Eckerstrom and Julie Hall have put their own opposition to the death
penalty ahead of his interests. "They never said anything about my
competence until they found out I want to be executed," he says.
"All of a sudden, I'm just nuts, incompetent."
In late 2000, Judge Silver appointed a second set
of attorneys to represent Comer on the competency issue, because of
the inmate's disenchantment with Eckerstrom and Hall. Those
attorneys say he's eminently qualified to discontinuehis appeals.
Silver held a three-day evidentiary hearing at her Phoenix courtroom
in late March to help with her decision. The session drew remarkable
testimony from the killer himself, who explained why he wants to die.
"A couple years ago, I'd have chopped your head
off just for looking crossways at me," Comer told the judge. "For no
reason at all. I'm still the same guy as I was back then. But a lot
of things have meaning for me now, like my victims. It's just time
to end it."
Legal experts around the nation anxiously are
awaiting Silver's ruling. If she decides Comer's years of isolation
at SMU II have rendered him incompetent, and appellate courts uphold
her ruling, other death row inmates being held in super-max units
are likely to be affected. The judge is expected to rule in a few
weeks.
Robert Comer historically has been a defense's
attorney's nightmare -- uncommunicative, unsympathetic and guilty of
the crimes with which he's been charged. Records show Comer spent
little time with his court-appointed attorney after his 1987 arrest
for murder and rape and other offenses. He chose not to attend his
seven-day jury trial, though, in hindsight, it wouldn't have
mattered much.
Comer had the same chance at his trial as he'd
allowed his victims at Apache Lake -- none.
His murder victim, Larry Pritchard, was a drifter
whose fatal mistake was settling down for the night at the same
campground as Comer. He died from a bullet fired at close range,
after which Comer cut his throat. The motive seems to have been a
combination of robbery and an intense desire to kill.
Tracy Andrews was spending the evening with her
boyfriend, Richard Brough, at a nearby campsite. Comer hog-tied
Andrews to a vehicle, and forced Brough to watch as he raped her the
first time. Andrews made an especially compelling witness, telling a
rapt jury how she'd later escaped Comer's clutches and fled into the
wild.
It didn't help matters when she described how
Comer had shot Pritchard's purebred beagle after murdering the man.
(Comer has denied shooting the dog.)
His attorneys presented little by way of defense
or mitigation. After the conviction on all counts, Judge Ronald
Reinstein demanded Comer's presence at sentencing, a memorable
event.
First, Maricopa County jailers rooted Comer from
his cell with high-powered water hoses, truncheons and fists. Comer
tried to stab them with a nine-inch-long shank during the clash.
Finally, he was strapped to a wheelchair, and pushed into
Reinstein's court.
Naked except for a towel draped over his genitals,
he sat before Reinstein slumped and mute, his face bloodied from the
jailhouse struggle, his body a mélange of indecipherable tattoos,
the very image of a modern-day monster.
The judge sentenced Comer to death, and added
more than 300 years on the rape-related convictions. Later that day,
April 11, 1988, authorities delivered Comer to death row in Florence,
then located on Cellblock 6 at the main prison complex. It wasn't
his first incarceration in a maximum-security institution
Robert Charles Comer's mother wrote the following
in her journal, shortly before giving birth to him in San Jose,
California. "I feel that it will be a boy because only a boy can
kick like this baby," Patricia Comer wrote on November 29, 1956.
Comer's history of violence and crime is told in
thousands of pages of legal documents, psychiatric reports and other
paperwork that have become public record over the years. Still, it
remains something of a puzzle how Comer evolved from a personable
kid who finished one badge short of being an Eagle Scout into a
stone-cold killer.
He was raised in a middle-class family, the
oldest of Patricia and Charles Comer's four children, all boys. His
father was an engineer for a technology firm, and his mother worked
as a quality-control inspector in Silicon Valley. Photos of a
youthful Comer depict a good-looking kid with an impish -- some
might say devilish -- grin. He loved to fish and was a member of the
school safety patrol, and played football for a time.
Comer's journey to death row started when he was
detained as a juvenile in the early 1970s on charges of assault,
burglary and trespassing. He quit high school during his senior
year, and enlisted in the U.S. Army in January 1975. (Comer later
earned his diploma by passing a GED test.)
He was training to become a military policeman
when his past caught up with him. In July 1975, Army officials
issued the 18-year-old an honorable discharge after learning of his
juvenile record. The next year, Comer served four months in a
California youth facility on a burglary rap, during which he became
a member of an offshoot of the Aryan Brotherhood.
After that, his crimes escalated. In December
1978, police arrested Comer on charges of kidnapping, rape, assault
with a deadly weapon, and other counts. He plea-bargained to a
relatively soft prison term of seven years, and was sent for the
first time to an adult prison.
Comer later admitted to having been involved in
several stabbings during his prison stint, some as perpetrator and
others as recipient. Still in his early 20s, he spent months in
solitary confinement at the prison in Folsom, California, a
profoundly violent institution.
Years later, Comer wrote about Folsom from
Maricopa County Jail while awaiting his trial for murder and rape:
"I remember feeling my mind shut down, one piece at a time. I used
to mess with the rats. I never could figure how they got in. At
night, they would crawl on you. At first, it bugged you. But just
like love, or the girl you left behind, you turned them all off. You
live like a robot. . . . I used to talk to the rats at first. After
four months, they talked back. You think you're going crazy, so you
don't talk with the rats no more. . . . After 6 or 7 months, all
your mind could say was, 'Fuck you.'"
Comer was released in August 1984 after he'd
served less than six years, and found sporadic work as a carpenter.
He tells New Times he used methamphetamines heavily during his 30
months of freedom after being paroled, and became increasingly
determined to seek revenge against society for evils perpetrated
against him at Folsom.
In February 1987, that revenge would take the
form of murdering a stranger, then repeatedly raping a young woman.
On April 11, 1988, Arizona State Prison authorities put Robert Comer
in a death row cell near its most infamous convict of the day,
Robert Wayne Vickers. "Bonzai," as Vickers had dubbed himself,
already was a mythical character in the Arizona prison system. He'd
murdered two fellow inmates who allegedly had "disrespected" him,
and had carved his misspelled nickname into the back of his first
victim.
Inmates in proximity to Vickers feared him like
no other, and kept their distance. But he and Comer soon realized
they were kindred spirits. "He was not just a friend, he was my
brother," Comer testified at his March hearing. "We spilled blood
together. We kept each other going, watched each other's back,
survived day to day. . . . Everybody knew if they messed with one of
us, they had to take both of us. You don't find that in prison. I
would give my life for him, as he would for me. We shared loyalty,
honor, tribe, brotherhood, friendship and kinship."
Authorities found Comer and Vickers so
problematic that they yanked the pair off death row, and put them in
a segregated pod, a precursor to Arizona's super-maximum units.
Super-max prisons came to the fore in the early
1990s as officials struggled to deal with increasingly violent
offenders. Now, SMU II houses about 720 inmates, including those on
death row. The facility also is home to the most uncontrollably
violent, the seriously mentally ill, and those designated as "STGs,"
or members of the Security Threat Groups -- gangs.
In May 1996, officials placed Comer and Vickers
in the Violence Control Unit at the new SMU II, an even more secure
facility. A year later, authorities moved the pair and the other men
on death row into a wing of SMU II. (As of last week, 127 condemned
men are incarcerated in that wing. The two women on death row are at
the Perryville prison west of Phoenix.)
All the while, Comer's automatic appeals of his
criminal convictions continued to grind through the state legal
system, then through federal court. The Arizona Supreme Court
affirmed Comer's convictions in July 1990. In 1994, the State of
Arizona issued a warrant of execution, another step on the inmate's
circuitous road toward death by lethal injection.
That year, Comer signed paperwork requesting the
appointment of so-called "habeas counsel." Such attorneys dissect
the record for any possible flaws that might lead a federal court to
reconsider the death sentence. Tucson attorney Peter Eckerstrom
became lead habeas counsel, and he quickly won a stay of Comer's
execution as he pursued the appeal. He was joined several years
later by co-counsel Julie Hall.
Comer tells New Times he'd basically forgotten
about his appeal until after he officially decided to seek execution
in early 2000. "Surprised the hell out of me," he says. "Then I
thought, 'Oh, well. I'll just have to get the courts up to speed
about where I'm at on this.' But it hasn't quite worked out that
way."
Robert Vickers was executed by lethal injection
in May 1999. Bonzai's death sent Comer into a months-long funk, and
he vowed revenge. That August, he fashioned yet another shank, on
which he inscribed his late friend's nickname. Comer sneaked the
weapon into the recreation area, but corrections officers subdued
him with tear gas before anyone got hurt.
Months later, the inmate decided to get on with
something he says he'd long been contemplating. "I wanted to let
them know they didn't have to play any more games with Comer no
more, that I wanted to pull my appeals," Comer tells New Times. "It
wasn't about my life in my box, because I can take that or leave
that. I can live in that box just fine. It's just the right thing to
do."
In March 2000, he mailed several handwritten
letters to judges and prosecutors that repeated those sentiments.
Comer's habeas lawyers say they were stunned by Comer's letters, and
tried to talk him out of it.
On April 15, 2000, attorney Julie Hall sent a 17-page
handwritten letter to Comer -- whom she'd never met. The missive was
a deeply personal plea to her client. "Dear Gypsy," the letter
started, "The things I am going to say are sincere and from my heart,
and not some line of bullshit from a lawyer." Hall told Comer how
much she hates SMU II, and how bad she feels after speaking to her
clients through the Plexiglas there. "A glass wall that tries to
tell people, this person you are looking at is not a person; it is a
specimen of evil that we removed from society. But I know the glass
wall is lying, because when I look through it, I am looking at a
friend."
Hall -- whose sole legal focus is appealing death-penalty
convictions -- said she understood how Comer's destructive
experiences at the Folsom prison had affected him: "The story that
needs to be told in your case is that society has to share in the
responsibility for the death of the man you were convicted of
killing. That society helped pull the trigger that night."
Even that overwrought plea didn't work. Comer
remained determined to die by lethal injection.
Volunteering for execution isn't as rare as it
might seem. Since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1976 that capital
punishment is constitutional, more than 90 convicted murderers have
asked to be put to death -- including 60 since 1996.
When the Ninth Circuit received Comer's letter,
it already had been considering his criminal appeal -- the one
written by Peter Eckerstrom. The court expressed concerns about
Comer's mental state, and how that may intersect with his life on
SMU II. That took on added significance when Judge Warren Ferguson
noted that the inmate's request to die came amid "serious questions
about the constitutionality of his conviction and sentence."
That comment strongly suggests the panel -- known
in legal circles for its civil libertarian bent -- is considering
overturning Comer's death sentence, maybe even his murder conviction.
But the court in June 2000 put the Comer case on hold until it hears
from Judge Silver on two critical issues:
If Comer is legally competent to waive his
appeals.
• If his decision to speed up his execution truly
is voluntary.
In late 2000, Silver appointed Phoenix attorneys
Mike Kimerer and Holly Gieszl to represent Comer's desire to
expedite his execution. Kimerer is one of Arizona's most respected
criminal-defense attorneys. Gieszl mostly does health-care
litigation, not criminal-defense work.
But she slowly won Comer's confidence -- no small
feat -- by visiting him almost every week at SMU II, sorting out his
complex, often mercurial moods, listening to his point of view.
Kimerer and Gieszl say they're anti-death
penalty, but have had no problem pursuing their unorthodox mission
-- to help Comer convince the courts that he should be allowed to
die by lethal injection.
On the other side, habeas attorney Peter
Eckerstrom felt compelled to explain that the fact he and Julie Hall
also are strongly opposed to the death penalty has little to do with
their trying to stave off Comer's execution. "While it is true that
we possess a moral opposition to the premeditated and unnecessary
taking of any human life, those personal views are entirely
irrelevant to these proceedings," he wrote Judge Silver last
November. "We have an overriding duty to represent the interests of
our client. Our view of the phenomenon of the death row volunteer is
that it represents a form of suicide that we would never endorse,
encourage or assist."
Even though Comer doesn't want them as his legal
advocates, Eckerstrom indicates he and Hall will resign from the
case only if Silver agrees to let the inmate drop his appeals and
the Ninth Circuit upholds her ruling.
To bolster their contention that Comer is not
mentally competent to decide to die, Eckerstrom and Hall hired
California super-max expert Terry Kupers to examine Comer and his
cell at SMU II.
The California psychiatrist concluded that Comer
has been rendered incompetent. He wrote in a report to Silver that
Comer's thinking stems from a deep depression and other
psychological maladies caused by the extremely harsh living
conditions.
"I have never seen a cell that is more physically
alienating and isolating than the . . . cell where Mr. Comer has
been confined for years," Kupers wrote, after spending about 20
hours with Comer over several sessions. "The conditions of
confinement where Mr. Comer presently resides are far beneath what
human decency requires, and as a result these conditions are
aggravating the mental disorder that compels Mr. Comer's rule-breaking
and threatening behavior. In these difficult straits, and as result
of a mental disorder, Mr. Comer is not able to make an intelligent
and rational decision to waive his appeals and be executed."
Kupers also contends that Comer suffers from
posttraumatic stress syndrome, from the time he spent in solitary
confinement 20 years ago at the prison in Folsom. "Mr. Comer is very
proud of the fact that he has not 'gone off his rocker' after 14
years in isolated confinement," he wrote. "And I concur -- that is
an impressive accomplishment.
"A significant proportion of reasonable adults,
were they subjected to the harsh conditions and treatment that Mr.
Comer has endured for so many years, would certainly have lost their
minds. But the absence of frank psychosis and being free of mental
disorder are two very different things."
Judge Silver appointed North Carolina's Dr. Sally
Johnson to also examine Comer. Johnson is a government psychiatrist
who has conducted forensic examinations of such superstar criminals
as Theodore "The Unabomber" Kaczynski, televangelist Jim Bakker, and
would-be presidential assassin John Hinckley Jr. (Hinckley once
wrote her a poem, titled "A Poem for My Favorite Pregnant
Psychiatrist.")
Johnson spent 52 hours interviewing Comer before
concluding he is competent to waive his criminal appeals. She agreed
with Kupers that the conditions of Comer's incarceration are
extremely severe, probably overly so. But Johnson said the super-max
hasn't made Comer incapable of making a rational decision to die. "The
question in regard to whether Mr. Comer's decision is voluntary is a
complex one," Dr. Johnson wrote. "Society has mandated through its
jury system that Mr. Comer be put to death. The implication is that
the normal position for Mr. Comer would be to disagree with
society's mandate. Mr. Comer, on the other hand, states he accepts
the jury's decision. . . . He explains that his current conditions
of confinement are not the motivating factor for his decision [to
drop his appeals]."
She added: "Mr. Comer expressed remorse for his
behavior, and felt it was just that he be punished for his behavior
within our society. He does not appear to have any irrational or
delusional thinking regarding death. He does not believe he is able
to be rehabilitated, and does not wish to have continued involvement
with anti-death penalty attorneys."
Security was extremely tight at the federal
courthouse on March 27, the day Robert Comer was to testify before
Judge Silver. Spectators had to sign in outside the courtroom, then
step through a metal detector. Comer's girlfriend, Amy Young, was
there, along with no fewer than a dozen prison officials. Some were
in plainclothes, some in uniform. They sat and stood near every door
in the expansive courtroom. Four bulky men wearing bulletproof
jackets and safety goggles flanked Comer.
The inmate sat attentively at a table in an
orange jumpsuit between his pro-execution attorneys Kimerer and
Gieszl. He was handcuffed, shackled, and wearing a belly chain.
Attorneys Pete Eckerstrom and Julie Hall sat directly across the
room at another table.
It was the first time Comer had been in a
courtroom since his bizarre wheelchair-bound sentencing in 1988.
More remarkably, it was the first time he'd ever testified in court.
Silver started the proceedings by asking Comer,
"How are you feeling today mentally?" "All right." "Physically?" "Pretty
good."
Doctors Kupers and Johnson reiterated their
opinions that Comer is, respectively, incompetent and competent to
drop his appeals. Straight-talking deputy warden Blaine Marshall,
who oversees death row at SMU II, testified that Comer is coherent
and bluntly honest with him, and has consistently expressed a wish
to be executed.
Corrections sergeant Wendy Hackney said Comer
often has spoken with her about wanting to speed up his execution.
"I've never doubted that he understands everything going on," she
testified.
Finally, it was Comer's turn. During questioning
by Holly Gieszl, he came across as a man who has spent many hours
contemplating his past, his present and his future: "I ended a whole
bunch of innocent people's lives, and changed their lives forever. I
was sentenced to death. That's the legal sentence. I pulled my
appeal. I owe that to them. I owe it to myself, man. I was totally
wrong. . . . God, you guys are a lot more humane to me than I ever
was to Larry [Pritchard]. Remember I stuck a gun in this guy's ear
and pulled the trigger, scrambled his brains, right?"
What came next was an extraordinary dialogue
between a jurist and a killer. A no-nonsense former prosecutor,
Silver asked Comer direct questions, and he answered them
thoughtfully and, by any definition of the word, competently. "This
has to do with me being tired," he told the judge. "Has to do with
me paying my debt to society. Let's do it. I don't know what
everybody's so scared about. Death is not that damned bad. Living
ain't that damned bad. But I killed Larry . . ."
Comer agreed that his life on SMU II is no joy
ride. However, contrary to Dr. Kupers' conclusions, he testified
he's been able to survive it intact: "I don't believe I have a life
that will make me jump up and down and clap my hands and go to a
party or nothing. Within the limits that I have, I try to live it
fully . . . I mean, I can't get a weekend pass to go to the bowling
alley, and I love to bowl. But I don't live dead in that cell."
Comer said he should be locked up at SMU II
because of his violent streak: "I'm the guy who they invented
super-maxes for. They let me out and walk around the halls, I'll get
along just like everybody else. Except I have this problem. Someone
runs their mouth at me, I deal with it."
Silver continued to grill Comer about that life.
"It seems Dr. Kupers is saying that your traumatic experiences in
prison -- and elsewhere -- has been so bad that you're unable to
cope now, and that this has affected your decision to voluntarily
decide the most fundamental decision in life, which is to live or
die. You understand?" "Yes."
"Why should I think, and why should any court who
reviews my decision, if I should agree with you, believe that you're
not just saying that in order to end your life now, because it's so
bad?" "Ma'am, I've spent 15 years in an isolation cell. Already. And
look at me. What is wrong with me that I'm hiding? What am I
hiding?" "I don't think anybody would question that you have
enormous capacity for human endurance, enormous capacity," Silver
responded. "But I have heard you say a number of times that you're
tired." "I am tired. I'm not depressed, but tired."
Comer had indicated earlier that he's against the
death penalty, which led the judge to ask him, "If you don't believe
in the death penalty, how can you voluntarily decide to take your
life, unless you're being overwhelmed by your conditions such that
you just want to take your life?"
"It's the law," Comer said, sounding more like a
prosecutor than a convict. "Just because I say the law's wrong
doesn't make the law wrong. I just don't believe in it. I was
sentenced to die, legally sentenced to die here."
Silver noted that Comer may yet win a new trial
in his murder case. "Yeah," Comer replied, "it's a good appeal, but
it's for you all, not for me. I killed Larry Pritchard. There is no
doubt about that. So [prosecutor] K.C. Scull called me a monster.
What was I trying to make him call me? Sure didn't want to be called
Goldilocks."
"Do you understand you could be found not
guilty?" the judge asked. "Yes, ma'am." "And I presume that you
don't believe that that's really much of a possibility, am I right?"
"No, ma'am." "And why?" "I did it."
On April 6, Judge Silver drove to Florence to see
for herself how inmate Comer lives. What she saw was this: Comer's
cell measures about eight feet by 11 and a half feet. A narrow bed
is attached to the back wall, with a thin, baby-blue blanket neatly
tucked under its mattress. At the foot of the bed is a television,
which prison officials recently provided as a reward for Comer's
staying out of trouble for almost a year.
Prison officials won't allow him to hang
photographs or memorabilia of any kind on his walls. Beneath the bed
are boxes of legal and other reading materials. Near the front of
the cell is a metal toilet and small wash basin, with a few other
sanitary items lined up above it. A tiny mirror is attached to the
wall above the basin.
The four other cells in Comer's pod also have a
small stool and metal "desk" attached to the wall near the sink. But
a few years ago, prison officials removed those items from Comer's
cell because he somehow was fashioning shanks from them. (He's
apparently put his shank-making on hold since last May, when he made
the one in tribute to the anniversary of Robert Vickers' 1999
execution.)
Comer and the others in his pod wear headphones
when listening to the radio or watching television. That makes for
an eerie silence, punctuated only by the occasional clanging of the
metal doors. To add to the isolation, the front of Comer's cell is
metal mesh with a small slot that opens and closes for food and
other deliveries. Another inmate on SMU II once compared it to
looking out at life -- a blank concrete wall in this instance --
through a colander.
Attached to the mesh is a supposedly unbreakable
Plexiglas-like covering called Lexan, designed to keep dangerous
prisoners such as Comer from having access to passersby with blow
darts, zip guns and the like. Because of the covering on all five
cells in his pod, Comer cannot converse easily with his peers. He
says it's like talking with cotton balls in his ears, so he doesn't
say much to anyone.
Every non-prisoner who steps into Comer's pod
must wear a protective jacket and safety glasses. He is allowed
three hourlong "recreational periods" -- by himself -- each week in
an enclosed outdoor space near his pod. It looks like a handball
court with a metal-mesh ceiling. (Prison officials may provide a
handball to inmates.) He may take three showers, each lasting up to
45 minutes. Comer is allowed one five-minute phone call weekly, and
may receive approved visitors for two hours, once weekly. He may
visit with his attorney twice weekly, for up to three hours.
Whenever Comer leaves his pod, officers handcuff
and shackle him to a gurney, then move him, face down. They also fit
him with a stun belt, which zaps him if he makes sudden, pronounced
movements.
Spending time in Comer's cell feels like being
trapped in a tomb: It's easy to understand why he walks endlessly,
and why he says he tries not to dwell much about life outside his
box. SMU II isn't for anyone, really, including Comer, but he's
adapted to life here as well as anyone could. Physically, this super-max
is a safer place for those around Comer, and for the inmate himself.
Mentally, he seems as normal as any violent career criminal that one
might ever meet.
Instead of having to watch his back every second,
Comer dabbles with crossword puzzles, writing letters to Amy Young,
perusing his legal papers, and watching the tube.
"I am not Hannibal Lecter, but I'm not that far
away from being him, either, under the right circumstances," he
tells New Times. "Know what I mean?"
