Admitted child killer Westley Allan Dodd received the death penalty Saturday for the slaying of three young boys last fall.
Against the advice of his attorneys, Dodd pleaded guilty last month to aggravated murder in the deaths of William and Cole Neer, ages 10 and 11, from Vancouver, and in the death of 4-year-old Lee Iseli of southeast Portland seven weeks later.The sentencing verdict came on the third day of deliberations by a six-man, six-woman Clark County jury. If the jurors had not reached a unanimous decision for the death penalty, Dodd automatically would have been sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Under Washington law the death sentence will automatically be appealed to the state Supreme Court. But Dodd, 28, of Vancouver, told an Oregon newspaper in a telephone interview from his jail cell Monday that he would not fight a death verdict.
The prosecution presented three days of graphic evidence against Dodd, including a diary he wrote detailing how he "hunted" for young boys, plotted their murders and described his feelings afterward. The prosecution also presented a series of photos, complete with captions, which Dodd allegedly took of one of his victims before and after he killed and raped him.