Serial killer appeals death sentence

SPOKANE — Convicted serial killer Robert Yates Jr. points to a more notorious serial killer in arguing that his Pierce County death sentence should be overturned.

Lawyers for Yates, sentenced to death in Pierce County for killing two women, contend capital punishment is unfair. They point to Green River serial killer Gary Ridgway, who got life in prison despite confessing to killing at least 48 women.

The Washington Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments in the appeal Nov. 30.

Yates was sentenced to 408 years in prison in 2000 after confessing to 13 killings in a plea deal with Spokane County prosecutors that included information on the Pierce County deaths.

Pierce County moved separately to charge Yates. He was convicted of killing two women in that county and sentenced to death in 2002.

In seeking to overturn his Pierce County sentence, Yates' lawyers said he was misled by Spokane County Prosecutor Steve Tucker into believing that the two Tacoma-area slayings were part of his Spokane plea agreement.

It wasn't, Pierce County said.

A key part of his appeal is that Yates, 54, didn't get the death penalty in Spokane, despite a larger number of victims.

"Mr. Yates' [death] sentence is arbitrary, wanton ... freakish and random in light of his Spokane County sentence," his lawyers argued in court documents.

The court in April narrowly upheld the death sentence of a man who fatally stabbed his wife and two children. That case also pointed to the disparity with Ridgway's sentence.

In that 5-4 case, the court acknowledged the extraordinary circumstances of Ridgway's case but said no matter how unfair it may seem, his plea deal does not automatically invalidate the state's death penalty for everyone else.

Yates' lawyers also argue that he should serve the Pierce County sentence only after he completes the Spokane sentence. In other words, his execution should wait until after he has served the 408 years.

Yates, an aluminum-smelter worker and Air National Guard helicopter pilot, was arrested in Spokane in April 2000 after years of unsolved deaths of local women, many of whom were prostitutes.

Within weeks of his arrest, Yates' public defender was trying for a plea agreement with Tucker. Through the lawyer, Yates started revealing information about his victims and his crimes.

Tucker has repeatedly said he thought he had then-Pierce County Prosecutor John Ladenburg's permission to include the two Pierce County cases in the plea deal.

Ladenburg has said he told Tucker in a conference call that a plea deal was "ill-considered and premature" and to leave the Pierce County cases out of any deal that didn't include the death penalty.

Tucker said he has no recollection of Ladenburg saying that.

Shortly after Tucker sent the proposed plea deal to Ladenburg, Yates was charged with the Pierce County homicides.

"By filing the cases in Pierce County, Mr. Ladenburg took public jurisdiction and control over what was rightfully his," the county's current prosecutor, Gerald Horne, wrote to the high court.

Washington is one of 38 states with the death penalty and has executed four people since the U.S. Supreme Court allowed reinstatement of capital punishment in 1976.