Idaho death row inmate Paul Ezra Rhodes, convicted of three 1987 murders, lost a Supreme Court appeal Monday.The justices, without comment, let stand rulings that Rhodes received a fair trial and a proper sentence for the February 1987 killing of Susan Michelbacher.
Prosecutors said he abducted Michelbacher, a teacher, from a grocery store parking lot and killed her in rural Bonneville County outside Idaho Falls. She was shot nine times.
Rhodes, 35, also was convicted of killing two convenience store clerks, Stacy Baldwin and Nolan Haddon, within a month of the Michebacher murder.
On March 24, 1988, then-district judge Larry Boyle ordered Rhodes to be executed for the Michelbacher slaying.
Boyle, now a federal magistrate, said, "If ever a situation warranted the death penalty, it is manifested in this case."
Upon hearing the sentence, Rhodes threw a chair at the prosecutor. He also received another death sentence and life imprisonment without possibility of parole on the other charges.
Rhodes' appeal argued, among other things, that Idaho's death penalty law is unconstitutional because of the comparatively short time allowed for appeals.
Under the state law, most people convicted of felonies get five years to file an appeal. But people convicted of a capital crime and sentenced to die get 42 days to file an appeal.
Sponsors of the law said it was intended to prevent inmates under death sentence from filing endless appeals, each covering a different subject.
Idaho has not had an execution since 1957. There are 22 inmates, all men, on Death Row, in various stages of the appeal process.
The Supreme Court previously has turned away similar attacks against the differing deadlines imposed by Idaho law.
Rhodes' challenge said the differing deadlines violated his equal-protection and due-process rights and resulted in cruel and unusual punishment.
The Idaho Supreme Court rejected that argument, ruling that the 42-day deadline is not unduly burdensome to lawyers who handle death penalty cases.
But a dissenting member of the state Supreme Court said, "This statement shamefully ignores the realities of death penalty defense work."
He added: "The defendant's post-conviction attorney is not always the same person who defended at trial. The post-conviction issues are not the same as the trial issues, and they cannot be simply collected and typed up."