Federal Indictment Filed in John E. Robinson Case

The death penalty is again being sought against a Kansas man convicted in a series of killings along the Missouri-Kansas border. John E. Robinson had been sentenced to death, in Kansas, in 2003 for the murders of three women in Johnson County, Kansas. He later received life sentences in Missouri after pleading guilty to five murders here. The bodies of some of the victims were found in barrels at a storage facility in Raymore. The effort to execute Robinson was handed a setback when the Kansas Supreme Court struck down that state’s death penalty law in 2004 – a ruling that has been appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. This new effort bypasses the Kansas court activity. The federal prosecutor in Kansas City has indicted Robinson for kidnapping, leading to death, in the killing of one of the victims – Suzette Trouten. This allows federal authorities to again seek the death penalty.