Robertson sentenced to death

Robertson, 25, began to cry even before the verdict was read. Then he broke down in sobs after the death sentence was announced to a packed courtroom at 9:30 p.m. Jurors had been deliberating for four hours.

Their deliberations capped a two-week trial in which prosecutors portrayed Robertson as a greedy son who killed his parents, Earl and Terry Robertson, to collect his share of a $2.2 million inheritance. Defense attorneys never denied his guilt, but argued he didn't deserve the death penalty because mental illness and drug use drove him to kill. Some jurors wept as Judge John Hayes read their verdict. Robertson, seated at the defense table, put his fingers in his ears and looked down.

A clerk questioned each of the jurors, asking if the signatures on the death-verdict form were theirs. Each one answered yes - some loudly, others barely audible.

No one consoled Robertson before he was led out of the courtroom by guards.

``I feel like justice was served,'' prosecutor Tommy Pope said. ``If the death penalty was not an appropriate sentence in this case, what about all the ones we have waiting in the wings?''

Linda Weaver, a longtime friend of Earl and Terry Robertson, said the trial was ``the longest two weeks of my life. . . . (Robertson) has no remorse. He thought he'd get away with it. For once in his life, he's going to have to pay for what he's done.''

Earlier Friday, Robertson had pleaded with jurors to spare his life, saying he was ``sorry for what happened'' and that he thinks every day about what he did. He was convicted last weekend of beating and stabbing his parents in their Rock Hill home.

``What happened that morning remains so vivid in my mind. I'll never be able to explain this. I'll never know why or how or anything,'' he said Friday, standing in front of the jury box.

Robertson now must choose between lethal injection or the electric chair. Had the verdict been life in prison, he would never have been eligible for parole.

``No matter what you choose, one way or the other, he's going to leave prison dead,'' Jim Boyd, Robertson's court-appointed attorney, told the jury.

His voice cracking, Robertson told jurors he misses his parents, whom he cut with a kitchen knife and beat to death with a claw hammer and baseball bat Nov. 25, 1997.

``I realize there are consequences, and I must be accountable for my actions,'' he said. ``But I ask you to allow me to have the continued opportunity to help others in prison . . . allow me to reach out to others so a similar thing never happens to anybody again.''

Jurors appeared to be listening intently to Robertson's statement, but they showed little emotion while he talked. During the lawyers' emotional arguments, however, several jurors wiped their eyes with tissues.

In a closing statement that lasted an hour and 20 minutes, Pope paced through the courtroom holding the baseball bat Robertson used to kill his father.

``Sometimes things don't have explanations,'' Pope said. ``Maybe sometimes people are just greedy and evil.''

Pope ridiculed the defense argument that mental illness and drug use - Robertson had snorted Ritalin just before the crime - led him to kill.

``Ladies and gentlemen, I say when you get down to your verdict, it's one of two things,'' Pope said. ``You buy that's a combination of Ritalin psychosis, Terry and Earl being bad parents . . . him getting the short end of the stick all the way through his life, or he's a spoiled-rotten rich kid who could not wait to receive his inheritance.''

Earl and Terry Robertson's estate is worth $2.2 million.

Robertson's attorneys called no witnesses during the guilt phase of the trial last week, but spent two days during the sentencing phase calling doctors who said a combination of mental illness and drug use led Robertson to kill his parents.

Pope said Robertson talked about killing his parents for years, put socks over his hands to avoid leaving fingerprints and left a note as an alibi. He said Robertson beat his father with an aluminum baseball bat because his wooden bat was autographed and might be worth money.

``Is this a man hopped out of his head on drugs, or is this a man who is planning?'' Pope said.

Pope showed a photograph of Terry Robertson's cut throat. He described the killings:

``He comes back and he cuts her again and again, not slashing cuts, slow and deliberate cuts,'' Pope said. ``He buried the back of the hammer in Earl's head . . . but that's not enough. He gets the bat. He beats him again and again and again.''

Pope said his own father used to ``tan my hide quite regular. . . . That man's 80 years old, and he's still taking care of me.''

He told the jury he called his dad this week to say thank you. His father told him he disciplined him because he loves him. ``We have to believe Terry and Earl loved their children more than they loved their life,'' he said.

He ended by saying that if Robertson doesn't deserve the death penalty, no one does.

``This case screams out, like Terry screamed that day,'' he said.

Boyd made no excuses for what Robertson did.

``If there was an excuse, if there was any justification, it would have been presented in the (guilt) phase of the trial,'' he said in his closing. Robertson's other attorney, Bill Hancock, told the jury they were deciding one of the most unusual cases in the country.

``Jimmy didn't look up one day and say, I'm going to be a bad kid,' `` he said. Hancock said Robertson inherited manic depression and attention deficit disorder from his parents.

He said Robertson had a deadly mix of mental illness and Ritalin in his system the night he killed his parents.

``If this crime doesn't show rage, and someone out of control, I've lost my common sense . . . That's not somebody who said, I want the money.' You shoot through a window if that's it,'' he said.

Boyd, who wrapped up the defense's presentation, said parents love their children unconditionally. He didn't understand that until his son was born 2 years ago, he said.

``I made him a promise that I will always love him no matter what,'' he said. ``If he becomes president of the United States someday, I will be proud of him, but if he goes the other way and becomes a mass murderer or a serial killer, I will still love him and be there for him. If he kills me, I'll still love him,'' he said.

Boyd said Robertson's parents would have been sitting behind him Friday if he had killed anyone other than them.

``And I submit to you that their spirit doesn't sit behind that table,'' he said, pointing to the prosecutors. ``I submit to you, they cry out to you for mercy.''

Reach Melissa Manware at (803) 327-8510.