Why 2 inmates received lethal injection after failed prison escape, murder

Contributed / Argus-Leader via Newspapers.com By C.S. Hagen Today at 10:00 AM Listen Comments Share Share this article News Reporting News Reporting Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. The Trust Project What is this? PIEDMONT, S.D. — The night that Eric Donald Robert stalked the driver of a 1993 Oldsmobile Cutlass was the first crime in a chain of events that would land him on death row. He followed the 18-year-old driver, Briana St. Clair, on her way to work near Blackhawk, South Dakota, before flicking on strobe lights resembling a police squad car from inside his red 1989 Chevrolet pickup truck, according to the Sioux Falls Argus-Leader. ADVERTISEMENT St. Clair pulled over around 2 a.m. and Robert walked to the driver’s side door, telling her he was a plainclothes police officer working narcotics. Contributed / Argus-Leader via Newspapers.com He asked her to perform field-type sobriety tests and then said he needed to search her trunk. She objected. He grabbed her and forced her into the trunk of her car. “I put you in here to teach you a lesson,” St. Clair said he told her. Robert took $225 from the vehicle, then drove his truck two blocks away, returning to drive her car to a nearby location. Unknown to him, however, St. Clair used her cell phone to call police, and he fled. The motive was not robbery. Robert had $14,000 in his checking account, according to Meade County Sheriff’s Deputy Ron White. “But for her cell phone, she would have been raped and killed,” said Meade County State’s Attorney Jesse Sondreal in 2011. ADVERTISEMENT The next day investigators found Robert’s pickup, with the police-like lights visible through the windows. Two days after the kidnapping, White found Robert at the Stage Barn Crystal Caverns, where he worked. He told White that he was drunk that night, and was too intoxicated to drive. His employer, Cheryl Williamson, backed his alibi. But Robert never did go drinking. He tried to change his appearance by shaving his one-inch-long blond hair down to the scalp. He matched the physical description that the victim gave law enforcement. Williamson recanted her story, saying that he told her he had met up with “some guys and did some stupid things.” Robert was convicted of kidnapping in Meade County, South Dakota, in January 2006, and was sentenced to 80 years imprisonment at the South Dakota State Penitentiary in Sioux Falls. Sondreal called Robert “one of the most potentially dangerous men I’ve ever met,” according to the Argus-Leader. Contributed / Argus-Leader via Newspapers.com ‘That person… no longer exists’ The kidnapping was just the first step in a crime trail that led to Robert's execution. He wasn’t like other death row inmates, according to multiple newspaper stories at the time. Raised by a single mother, Robert helped raise his younger sister in Wisconsin. He did well in school, put himself through college and had a successful career in wastewater treatment. As an emergency medical technician, he also frequently volunteered to help the communities where he lived. Even his former employer, Dan Romans, the wastewater administrator in Superior, Wisconsin, called Robert a “natural born leader,” who accomplished more in 18 months on the job than others had done in decades. ADVERTISEMENT He was a man who “has done more good in his life than many people in this world,” according to his sister, Jill Stalter, in 2005. But something changed Robert around the time he lost his job because he failed to comply with a city residence requirement. Friends who knew him said there was an undercurrent of anger that most people didn’t see. He once punched his high school sweetheart so hard that her bottom teeth protruded from her lip. Several women accused him of rape. In court, Robert refused to let his lawyer speak of his good deeds. “To be honest with you, the good acts that I’ve done in my life were not mentioned here, because they are irrelevant to these proceedings,” Robert said in court. “That person who did good things no longer exists.” Contributed / Argus-Leader via Newspapers.com Deadly escape attempt On April 12, 2011, Robert and fellow inmate, Rodney Berget, just two of South Dakota State Penitentiary’s 760 inmates, came up with an escape plan that would begin with a gruesome beating and end at the razor wire atop the prison’s west gate. A third inmate, Michael Nordman, provided Robert and Berget, both 48 years old, with a lead pipe and plastic shrink wrap. They were working as laundry orderlies, collecting soiled clothes from the prison and bringing them to the laundry room, which was accessed through an unguarded side door of the Prison Industries building. Contributed / Argus-Leader via Newspapers.com Ronald “RJ” Johnson was working alone as part of the early rec crew, according to court documents. It was his 63rd birthday. He wasn’t even scheduled to work, but he filled in for someone who had fallen sick at the Pheasantland Industries building, a part of the penitentiary. ADVERTISEMENT Robert and Berget ambushed Johnson, beating him viciously with a lead pipe and wrapped his head with the plastic shrink wrap before hiding his body. Robert then changed into Johnson’s uniform, Berget hid inside a box. Wearing Johnson’s brown pants, hat and lightweight jacket, Robert pushed a four-wheeled cart toward the prison’s west gate, head down, with Berget — serving life sentences for attempted murder and kidnapping — hiding inside a box, according to the Twin Cities Pioneer Press. Video cameras spotted them walking through a dimly lit hallway, and they arrived at the west gate. Another guard, Jodie Hall, let them through the inner gate before she told Robert to swipe his badge to prove his identity to exit the facility. He said he had forgotten it. Another guard, Matt Freeburg, didn’t recognize Robert, and told Hall to call a supervisor. Contributed / Argus-Leader via Newspapers.com “That’s when Berget burst out of the box and both inmates began to beat Freeburg,” the Argus-Leader reported. As other guards came running over, Robert tried to climb the outer gate leaving Berget to continue the fight. They were quickly subdued, and guards found Johnson’s wallet and car keys in the uniform Robert was wearing. Johnson later died at a hospital. ADVERTISEMENT Both men had tried to escape before. Berget had a violent past, at one time shooting his ex-girlfriend, Beatrice Miranda, in the back and her new boyfriend in the chest, according to the Argus-Leader. “I am so happy he didn’t escape,” Miranda told Argus-Leader reporters in 2011. “As long as he’s alive, he’s going to try and do something. I hope he gets the death penalty.” Berget grew up with an alcoholic father who beat him, and was first sent to the adult prison system at 15. His brother, Roger Berget, was convicted in 1987 for killing a man for his car in Oklahoma, and spent the next 13 years on death row before he was executed in 2003. “The siblings’ journey from poverty of their South Dakota childhood to stormy, crime-ridden adult lives shows the far-reaching effects of a damaged upbringing — and the years of havoc wrought by two men who developed what the courts called a wanton disregard for human life,” the Rapid City Journal reported. Contributed / Argus-Leader via Newspapers.com ‘We weren’t done living’ Johnson’s murder prompted more than two dozen security changes to protect staff and inmates, according to the Argus-Leader. But the security changes did little to assuage Johnson’s widow, Lynette, who later sued the state for negligence. They had spent only six nights apart in their marriage of 34 years, according to the Argus-Leader. He was the father of two and grandfather of six, and never missed one of their soccer games. When his son, Jesse, played football for University of Sioux Falls, he would hide behin