Robert Lee McConnell, 33, pleaded guilty to shooting his victim nine times with a handgun in August 2002 at the home the man shared with a woman McConnell used to date. McConnell then waited for the woman to return from work, cut off her clothes with a knife, raped her and forced her to drive to San Mateo, Calif.

She escaped when they stopped at a service station, and he was captured later in San Francisco.

“I wouldn’t play around and have feelings like I did the last time,” McConnell told the Reno Gazette-Journal in a prison interview. “I wouldn’t let her get away. She would be tortured and killed.”

Robert Lee McConnell

A June 9 2005 execution was scheduled Thursday by Nevada prison officials for Robert Lee McConnell, 33, sentenced to die for raping his ex-girlfriend and murdering her fiancé.

The former Reno resident has said he won't file any appeals or petitions that would automatically stop his execution by injection at the Nevada State Prison in Carson City. State Prisons Director Jackie Crawford scheduled the execution following a Washoe County District Court appearance last week by McConnell, who said he spoke with prosecutors and agreed that his execution in early June "would be fine." 

Pam McCoy, the mother of McConnell’s victim, Brian Pierce, attended Tuesday’s hearing and said she was glad to see the process moving forward. She said she has not decided whether she will attend the execution, but said, “I do support the death penalty.”

McConnell pleaded guilty to shooting Brian Pierce, 25, 10 times with a handgun in August 2002 at the Sun Valley home that Pierce shared with a woman McConnell previously dated.

After killing Pierce, McConnell hid the body in a back bedroom and waited for the woman to return from work, police said. He then raped her and forced her to drive to the San Francisco Bay area, where she escaped when they stopped at a service station.

In July 2003, a Washoe County jury sentenced McConnell to death for the murder and to two life prison terms for the rape and kidnapping. He fired his court-appointed lawyers and represented himself during the sentencing proceedings - agreeing with a prosecutor who called him an evil man who deserved no mercy.

During the penalty phase of the trial, jurors heard a taped phone call from McConnell to his father, in which McConnell said Pierce was reaching for a door and "I shot him 10 times before he hit the ground."

Michael Pescetta, a federal public defender who specializes in death penalty cases, said his office has been in contact with McConnell, is aware of the death row inmate's interests and isn't sure if there will be an attempt to appeal over his wishes.

A mandatory, automatic appeal to the state Supreme Court already has been rejected. If McConnell is executed, he'd become the 12th person to die in Nevada following the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in the 1970s that cleared the way for capital punishment to resume in this country. Ten of those who died in Nevada since then were, like McConnell, volunteers who declined to file further appeals that would have kept them alive.

UPDATE:

As he awaits his scheduled execution Thursday, Robert Lee McConnell says his only regret is that he killed his ex-girlfriend's fiancé instead of the woman. "I wouldn't play around and have feelings like I did the last time," the 33-year-old death row inmate told the Reno Gazette-Journal. "I wouldn't let her get away. She would be tortured and killed."

The former Reno car salesman has said he won't file any appeals or petitions that would automatically stop his execution by injection at the Nevada State Prison in Carson City.

McConnell pleaded guilty in Washoe County District Court to shooting Brian Pierce, 25, nine times with a handgun in August 2002 at the Sun Valley home that Pierce shared with the woman McConnell once dated. McConnell then waited for the woman to return from work, cut off her clothes with a knife, raped her and forced her to drive to San Mateo, Calif. She escaped when they stopped at a service station, and he was captured later in San Francisco.

In a prison interview with the Gazette-Journal, McConnell says he plotted to kill Pierce and the woman after his 2001 arrest on suspicion of violating a temporary protective order the woman had sought. He was fired later from his $10,000-a-month sales job. "They ruined my livelihood," McConnell says. "So, you're going to pay. I told them, `It may not be today, but when you least expect it.' "

But McConnell says he had second thoughts about killing the woman after she returned home that day. "I allowed my personal feelings from the past to come into play," he told the Gazette-Journal. "With Brian, it was business. ... It was brutal. It was heinous. With her it was like, `I hate this person. I hate this person,' but 30 minutes into it, it's weird. I was like, `I don't know if I'm going to be able to do this.' "

McConnell claims it was the woman's fault that Pierce was killed. "She played both sides against the middle," he says. "The truth is, this guy got taken by her, too. "He was a cool guy. I will always maintain the apology I gave to Pierce's mother. I'm sorry I took your son. I don't think he deserved that. "The honest truth is, if I could take it back, I would kill her. Yes, I should have killed her and left him alone," he adds. In July 2003, a Washoe County jury sentenced McConnell to death for the murder and to two life prison terms for the rape and kidnapping.

During the trial, McConnell said he believed in the death penalty. Now, he says he opposes capital punishment as state-sanctioned murder. But he gave his word to go ahead with the execution, he says, and plans to follow through. "No matter what I do I'm going to upset people on either side," McConnell says. "If I don't go through with it, I upset (Pierce's) family. If I do, my mother ... loses a son."

UPDATE:

Death row inmate Robert Lee McConnell filed an 11th-hour appeal Thursday night that prevented his execution by lethal injection at Nevada State Prison. Officials said they had expected McConnell, 33, to file the petition, even though he declared at a Wednesday news conference that he was ready to die. "It certainly seems as though he was playing a game with the system," Deputy Attorney General Gerald Gardner said.

A stay halting the execution was signed at 8:26 p.m. by Washoe County Judge Steve Kosach after McConnell exercised his right to an appeal. McConnell was sentenced to death for murdering his ex-girlfriend's fiance in August 2002.

He expressed regret for the murder but said he should have followed through with his plan to kill the woman who had ruined his life and "deserved to die." McConnell decided to petition after getting a final hug from his mother and stepfather, meeting with a Catholic priest and federal public defender and having a last meal of pepperoni pizza and cookies-and-cream ice cream.

The former Reno car salesman told reporters he was guilty of murdering Brian Pierce, 25, and didn't fear dying but also said he didn't deserve to die for shooting Pierce. He called executions "state-sanctioned murder."

McConnell also was convicted of raping the woman at the Sun Valley home she shared with Pierce. McConnell, raised in a broken home and in group homes, spent about three years in the California Youth Authority before his release at age 21.

He said that background plus his bad temper and vindictiveness led to the events that put him on death row. McConnell pleaded guilty in Washoe County District Court to shooting Pierce nine times. Prosecutors said the final shot, to the head, was fired at such close range that it left burns on the victim.

After the shooting, prosecutors said McConnell dragged the body to a back bedroom, tried to dig out some of the bullets that killed Pierce and then stabbed him with a steak knife and placed a tape of the movie "Fear" next to the knife that was buried to the hilt in the victim's chest.

According to court and police records, McConnell, dressed in black, then waited for the woman to return from work and attacked her. In July 2003, a Washoe County jury sentenced McConnell to death for the murder and to two life prison terms for the rape and kidnapping.

He fired his court-appointed lawyers and represented himself during the sentencing proceedings agreeing with a prosecutor who called him an evil man who deserved no mercy. A mandatory, automatic appeal was later rejected by the state Supreme Court.

  

The road of revenge: With nothing left to lose, Robert McConnell talks about his life -- and crossing the line

By Martha Bellisle - Rgj.com

June 4, 2005

Revenge. Obsession. And a temper beyond control.

This lethal combination led Robert McConnell to plot a murder, shoot the young man who was living with his former girlfriend and then rape and kidnap her.

And given the opportunity, he said, he would finish the task: The woman, then 25, would not be spared.

“I wouldn’t play around and have feelings like I did the last time,” McConnell says during a recent interview at the Nevada State Prison in Carson City. “I wouldn’t let her get away. She would be tortured and killed. And her dad.”

These thoughts and this admission come from a man who seemingly has nothing else to lose — a cocky, aggressive guy who doesn’t drink, smoke or do drugs and characterized by prosecutors as an evil, cold, calculating control freak who would stop at nothing to get his way.

After dropping all appeals and vowing before a jury and a judge to take responsibility for his crime by saving the victim’s family any more grief, McConnell is scheduled to die of lethal injection Thursday for the brutal murder of 25-year-old Brian Pierce on Aug. 7, 2002.

If all goes as planned, McConnell, 32, will become the 11th death row inmate in Nevada to volunteer to be executed since the Legislature reinstated capital punishment in 1977. Only one inmate during that period died against his will.

While some question whether McConnell is competent to make a rational decision about his death and some say capital punishment only encourages a cycle of violence, others, including Pierce’s mother, say McConnell’s passing will allow closure to a violent nightmare that has torn their lives apart and changed them forever.

Even standing this close to his own mortality, McConnell, an articulate fast-talker who collects data like squirrels collect acorns, and who thinks the Internet is the best invention ever, talks about the execution with the same matter-of-fact style that he recalls looking into Pierce’s eyes after the fatal shooting or wishing he had killed the young woman instead.

“No matter what I do I’m going to upset people on either side,” says McConnell, as he sits in a small meeting room, handcuffs resting just below the spiderweb and “fighting Irish guy” tattoos decorating his forearms. “If I don’t go through with it I upset his family. If I do, my mother ... loses a son.

“But at the same time, that’s what I said from the beginning. So...”

So he waits, along with his lawyers, prosecutors, the victims’ families and his, for that 9 p.m. gathering across the prison yard in an upstairs room, knowing that at any point in the process, he can change his mind.

Violent lessons

Chief Deputy District Attorney Tom Barb, who prosecuted the case from the start, says McConnell has spent his life trying to manipulate people.

“He’s a guy who can’t let go of anything,” says Barb. “Everything’s a game to him. His macho side keeps him from ever being able to lose.

“He just wants to be in control of everything the touches and if he’s not, he’s a nasty, nasty person.”

McConnell even sought to control his own trial. Soon after pleading guilty, he dismissed his lawyers and told the judge he wanted to represent himself. Washoe District Judge Steven Kosach granted his request.

But McConnell’s mother, Kim Sauln, who recently moved to Northern Nevada from San Jose, Calif., said he had a rough start in life.

“I was very young when I had him -- 15,” she said. “He always had difficulty with his quick temper. He was very rebellious. He could never get rid of that chip.”

“But with the situation the way it is, how can we not forget the past,” she said, crying. “He’s always going to be my son. Now two mothers lose their sons.”

McConnell, a short, stocky man who used to shave his head and now sports a beard, began making decisions for himself at a very early age. He said his mom, a single parent who never married his dad, worked too much and was unavailable for even the most basic of child care.

He slept on the couch, was continually locked out of the apartment, ate popcorn for breakfast and stole money out of her wallet for lunches, he says. After hearing complaints from his Bay Area neighbors, the state found her an unfit mother and sent him to a group home.

“My mom was a great mom as far as loving,” McConnell recalls. “But working two jobs, the supervision was lacking. There was no physical abuse. It was more neglect.”

After leaving the home when he was about 10, McConnell went to live with his father in Texas, and there learned what physical abuse felt like, he says.

“That was the way he grew up: corporal punishment,” McConnell says. “I ran away several times and was successful in ’87 when I was 15.” He found his way back to his mother in California by sneaking on to buses and hitching rides.

But by then his mother was dating a man who did not allow McConnell to control the roost. After a few run-ins with the law, he soon landed in the California Youth Authority and didn’t get out until he turned 21 and they could no longer hold him.

“It was the most violent place I’ve seen, even considering the stuff I’ve seen here,” he says, referring to the state prison system.

It was in this juvenile facility, he says, that he learned the power of revenge -- guidelines that have governed his life ever since.

“I had done somebody wrong when I was 17 or so,” he says. “Three years later I forgot about this guy, and he caught up with me and smashed me, beat me down.”

McConnell says he asked the guy what the attack was all about, and was reminded of their previous run-in.

“This was just his first opportunity to catch me slipping,” he said. From then on, he says, he followed this guy’s lead and got even with anyone who crossed him.

“If somebody cuts you off (in traffic) you may say f-you and get in a fist fight, but you’re not going to track them down two years later and say you’re in for it,” he says.

“But see, I would. I’m like that.”

He says he tried to live a normal life, selling cars and hanging out with friends.

“I could handle all that,” he says. “But I never got the temper in check and I still live by those same rules.”

Crossing the line

According to court testimony, McConnell dated the woman some time in 2001, but the relationship soured. When she moved on and began dating Pierce, a Reed High School graduate with a strong Christian upbringing and supportive family, McConnell stayed around.

He says she kept calling him back; she says he wouldn’t go away.

Finally, after several confrontations, McConnell says the woman and Pierce, who became engaged, crossed the line and pushed him to the point where revenge was his only option.

The last straw came with a fight over a temporary protective order the woman had sought early in 2001. The order was granted, forcing McConnell to keep his distance.

But she said he continued to violate the restrictions. When she called the police several times to report that McConnell was driving by her house and calling, a judge issued an arrest warrant.

McConnell says he was served with the warrant on the showroom floor at a local car dealership where he was pulling in $10,000 per month as a salesman.

“The secretary, all these people, are looking at me, like you’re a scumbag who beats on woman,” McConnell recalls. He told his coworkers that the woman’s claims were “bogus,” he says, but he was fired, so it was time to fight back.

“It just stacked up on me to the point where, all right, if I’m going to go back to jail, it’s like the World Series of poker, I’m on a limb,” he says. “I’m not going back for a nickel and dime. I’m going to kill these people, and I’ll get rid of the witnesses.

At that point there was no more threatening, he says.

“They ruined my livelihood,” he adds. “So, you’re going to pay. I told them, it may not be today, but when you least expect it.”

Yearlong plot

At the end of 2001, McConnell left Reno and headed east to Pennsylvania to help his father with a construction project. He stayed away for nine months before stuffing his backpack with a 9 mm handgun, seven or eight clips, 100 rounds, a ski mask, rope, gloves and a knife and boarded an Amtrak train in August 2002 for the ride west.

He secured a car with dealer plates, staked out the Sun Valley home the woman and Pierce shared, clocked their comings and goings on a note pad and waited for the perfect moment.

It came on Aug. 7, 2002.

Dressed in black, he broke into the house and when Pierce returned from work at 2:30 p.m., McConnell fired 10 shots, hitting Pierce nine times. McConnell dragged Pierce’s body into a spare bedroom and used a butter knife to remove several of the special Black Talon bullets he brought for the occasion.

“Yeah, I was doing that to see what they looked like and thought maybe I should take them out for evidence because they’re going to know what kind of bullet it was,” he says nonchalantly. He left the knife in Pierce’s body when he was done.

He also left a calling card: on Pierce’s stomach McConnell placed the video of the movie he found in the living room: “Fear -- Together forever. Or else.”

McConnell considered dismembering the body, he told his father during a recorded call from prison in 2002, but decided against it. “I was going to cut the dude’s head off, but I didn’t have time -- she was coming home,” he said in the recording.

The plan was to kill her, too, he says during the recent interview.

McConnell says he thought he would get away with it, but when the woman arrived home “it kind of went sideways.”

“I allowed my personal feelings from the past to come into play,” he says. “With Brian, it was business. As bad as that sounds, at the time everything went according to plan. I looked in his eyes. I checked his pulse. I stabbed him after. It was brutal. It was heinous.”

But with the woman, it became emotional, he says.

“With her it was like, ‘I hate this person. I hate this person,’ but 30 minutes into it, it’s weird,” he says. “I was like, ‘I don’t know if I’m going to be able to do this.’ ”

“At that point,” McConnell says with a laugh, “I said, ‘I’m going to prison.’ The minute I started having second thoughts about taking her life, man, I’m leaving a living witness. I’m done.”

Instead of shooting her, McConnell took the woman into the master bedroom, restrained her with duct tape and handcuffs and forced her to have sex, according to court testimony. He then made her drive them to California where she escaped during a stop at a gas station in San Mateo.

She didn’t learn that her fiance was dead in the other bedroom until she returned to Reno.

Five days later, McConnell was captured in the San Francisco area following a manhunt that included the FBI and several law enforcement agencies.

After several court hearings, he pleaded guilty on May 30, 2003 and was sentenced to die on Aug. 28, 2003.

Remorse?

As the execution date approaches, McConnell says his only regret is that he killed Pierce instead of the woman.

And he says it was her fault that Pierce was killed.

“She played both sides against the middle,” McConnell says. “The truth is, this guy got taken by her, too.

“He was a cool guy,” McConnell adds. “I will always maintain the apology I gave to Mrs. McCoy. I’m sorry I took your son. I don’t think he deserved that.

“The honest truth is, if I could take it back, I would kill (her),” he says adamantly. “Yes, I should have killed her and left him alone.”

Preparing to die

With all the court hearings behind him, McConnell says he keeps busy reading, writing and trying to keep things as normal as possible. He keeps his cell in Unit 12 immaculate -- he makes his bed and stacks his books neatly on a shelf.

His style is orderly, free of clutter -- everything in its place.

Thanks to the encouragement of Pam McCoy, Pierce’s mother, he says he has made amends with his own mother. During his trial, McConnell spoke badly of her and said he had “trust issues with women” that stemmed from their failed relationship.

“I wrote my mom a letter expecting her to reject it, like I had done to her, and she didn’t,” he says. “She wrote back and said the past is the past. I don’t know what the future has in store but this has got to end and we’re both adults now, you’re my first-born son and I love you.

“I told her, ‘I love you, too , mom, and I’m sorry.’ ”

During the trial, McConnell said he believed in the death penalty. “I would give me a death sentence — that’s a fact,” he told the jury during the penalty phase.

But now, McConnell says he opposes the death penalty, believing it is state-sanctioned murder. He also says he was brought up Catholic and believes in Pope John Paul’s opposition to capital punishment.

But he gave his word to go ahead with the execution, he says, so he plans to follow through.

“My attorney said it best,” he says. “She said, ‘I understand life in prison is going to be tough,’ but I told her I don’t want to be buried in a room for the rest of my life.”

“The most basic instinct is self-preservation,” he adds. “But regardless of how bad it is, you have to understand that you put yourself there. And there is a certain amount of punishment that you have to accept.

“I made those prior statements and I’m feeling pressure from all sides to follow through. But I’m also receiving pressure from other people to not do it and not take another life.”

Nevada death row inmate decides to appeal; execution postponed

By Brendan Riley - Associated Press

June 9, 2005

CARSON CITY, Nev. – Death row inmate Robert Lee McConnell filed an 11th-hour appeal Thursday night that prevented his execution by lethal injection at Nevada State Prison.

Las Vegas Review-Journal

By Brendan Riley

July 26, 2009

CARSON CITY -- The state Supreme Court has rejected an appeal from condemned Nevada inmate Robert Lee McConnell, who came within 34 minutes of being executed in 2005.

Justices dismissed several claims Thursday from McConnell, 37, including one that Nevada's lethal injection method is unconstitutional. The state uses three drugs for executions, including a "downer" that can cause death, another that stops breathing, and a third that stops the heart.

The former Reno car salesman was convicted in Washoe County District Court of murdering Brian Pierce, 25, his ex-girlfriend's fiance, in 2002. He also was convicted of raping the woman at the Sun Valley home she shared with Pierce.

The high court said a lower court properly rejected Mc-Connell's challenge of the lethal three-drug "cocktail," which isn't spelled out in state law and is left to the discretion of the state's prison director.

Justices also dismissed McConnell's arguments that the lower court erred in dismissing his claims that his guilty plea wasn't entered knowingly and voluntarily; that he had ineffective legal counsel; and that the elected jurists who presided over his trial and appeals lacked impartiality because they're "beholden to the electorate."

Also dismissed was McConnell's argument for a revision of the Supreme Court's 2004 ruling in his case that has led to numerous reviews of other Nevada death penalty cases. He sought the revisions to bolster his ineffective-counsel claim.

In the 2004 ruling, the court held that a defendant can't be convicted of first-degree murder using a particular circumstance, such as a killing that occurred during a robbery, and then have robbery used again as an aggravating circumstance in the penalty phase of a trial.

McConnell pleaded guilty to shooting Pierce nine times. Prosecutors said the final shot, to the head, was fired at such close range that it left burns on the victim.

After the shooting, prosecutors said McConnell dragged the body to a back bedroom, tried to dig out some of the bullets that killed Pierce. Then McConnell stabbed him with a steak knife and placed a tape of the movie "Fear" next to the knife that was buried to the hilt in the victim's chest.

According to court and police records, McConnell then waited for the woman to return from work and attacked her.