Jeffrey Lundgren led a breakaway religious group in Kirtland, Ohio, a town of about 6,000 people some 25 miles northeast of Cleveland. On April 17, 1989, five members of one family from his group, Dennis and Cheryl Avery and their three daughters, Trina, Rebecca and Karen, died in Kirtland. In August 1990 a jury in Lake County found Lundgren guilty of five counts of aggravated murder, each carrying two death penalty specifications, and five counts of kidnapping. It recommended death, and the trial court imposed the sentence in September 1990. For the three children the offenses were murder, with other charges.
Lundgren was the group's only member sentenced to death. Thirteen followers were arrested, among them his wife and his elder son, and those convicted received prison terms or, in the lightest cases, suspended sentences with probation. His case then ran through the Ohio courts for five years, through post-conviction proceedings and federal habeas corpus review for another eleven, and ended with an execution date that was moved once and a stay that lasted less than a week. Ohio executed him on October 24, 2006.
Jeffrey Don Lundgren was born on May 3, 1950. In the 1980s he was a lay minister in the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the church now called the Community of Christ, and he was dismissed from that post in 1987. He then gathered a group of about twenty followers, most of them from Missouri, around his own teachings and called himself a prophet. The followers took outside work and gave their pay to him, and in return he provided for their needs. Kirtland, which has a place in nineteenth-century Mormon history through its temple, was where the group settled.
Dennis and Cheryl Avery had both grown up in the same church. They were described in 1990 as a quiet couple with little money who were devoted to their three daughters and to their faith. They disagreed with changes in the church, including the ordination of women, and in 1987 they followed Lundgren from Missouri to Ohio. By the time of the offenses they, too, were handing their earnings to the group. Their daughters were Trina, Rebecca, known as Becky, and Karen, the youngest.
The five members of the Avery family died in Kirtland on April 17, 1989. Lundgren was convicted of all five aggravated murders and of five counts of kidnapping. For the three children the offenses were murder, with other charges. Followers of the group were also convicted in the case.
The Kirtland police were investigating the matter by early January 1990, and within days the indictments and arrests followed.
Lundgren was indicted in Lake County on January 5, 1990. On January 7 he was arrested in California, and his wife and his older son were taken into custody there soon afterwards. They contested extradition to Ohio at a first court appearance in California later that week. By the time the Los Angeles press reported the arrests, thirteen members of the group had been taken into custody in connection with the five deaths, and other members who had been indicted had admitted their involvement.
Lundgren was charged with five counts of aggravated murder and five counts of kidnapping. Each aggravated murder count carried two death penalty specifications. The first alleged that the offense was part of "a course of conduct involving the purposeful killing of or attempt to kill two or more persons." The second alleged that the murder was committed while "committing, attempting to commit, or fleeing immediately after committing or attempting to commit kidnapping."
The prosecutions of the followers began before Lundgren's own trial and continued after it.
His elder son, Damon Lundgren, was convicted in September 1990 of four counts of aggravated murder and four counts of kidnapping. The Lake County Court of Common Pleas sentenced him to four consecutive terms of 20 years to life for aggravated murder and four consecutive terms of 10 to 25 years for kidnapping, a minimum of 120 years. The four counts related to Dennis Avery and the three daughters.
Ronald Luff, described as Lundgren's second in command, was tried separately. Because of pretrial publicity, the trial was moved from Lake County to Lucas County and held in Toledo, before a visiting judge from Lake County. He pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. On December 20, 1990 a jury convicted him of five counts of aggravated murder and five counts of kidnapping. The jurors, who deliberated for three days on the penalty, did not recommend death, and he was sentenced on January 10, 1991.
Lundgren's wife was convicted and received a long prison sentence. Seven further followers were convicted for their roles in the deaths. Some of the thirteen pleaded guilty to reduced charges, and others were convicted of obstructing justice and received a year in prison or suspended terms with probation. One woman who has said she did not warn the family was convicted, sentenced to prison and paroled in 2010.
Lundgren's trial opened in Lake County on August 23, 1990. His lawyers had asked for the trial to be moved because of the publicity the deaths had produced, and the trial court refused. The jury returned guilty verdicts on August 29, 1990 on all ten counts: five of aggravated murder and five of kidnapping.
The case then moved to the sentencing phase. In Ohio a capital trial is divided into two parts, the first to decide guilt and the second to decide the penalty. In the second, the defense presented what the Supreme Court of Ohio later summarized as a personality disorder, honorable service in the Navy in Vietnam, sincere religious beliefs and a lack of significant earlier criminal convictions. Lundgren himself told the jury that he was a prophet. The jury was not persuaded, and it recommended death on each of the five aggravated murder counts.
The trial court adopted the recommendation and imposed the death sentence in September 1990, with consecutive prison terms on the kidnapping counts.
The Ohio Court of Appeals for Lake County affirmed the convictions and the sentence. For offenses committed before January 1, 1995, Ohio law sent a capital appeal first to the court of appeals and then to the Supreme Court of Ohio, and Lundgren's case followed that path. He raised thirty-two propositions of law. They covered pretrial publicity and the refusal to move the trial, the conduct of jury selection, evidence and the prosecution's conduct, jury instructions, the sufficiency of one of the death specifications, the effectiveness of his lawyers, and challenges to Ohio's death penalty statutes.
On August 30, 1995 the Supreme Court of Ohio affirmed the court of appeals' judgment in State v. Lundgren, 73 Ohio St.3d 474. Four justices concurred in full. Two justices concurred in part and dissented in part, in a separate opinion that concerned only the admission of photographic evidence and that agreed with the judgment. The court also made its own review of the sentence under section 2929.05 of the Revised Code. It found that the evidence supported the aggravating circumstances and concluded, as to each of the five aggravated murders, that they outweighed the mitigating factors beyond a reasonable doubt. It gave the history, character and background factors only modest weight, and some weight to the personality disorder and to his lack of significant criminal convictions.
He then turned to post-conviction proceedings in the Ohio courts, in which an inmate may raise errors that lie outside the trial record, and to federal habeas corpus review. None succeeded. On March 13, 2006 the Sixth Circuit upheld the convictions and the sentence, and the Ohio Attorney General's office said that his appeals were exhausted.
The Supreme Court of Ohio set his execution for October 10, 2006. In August it moved the date to October 24, because the Governor was due to be out of the country on a trade mission on the first date. The Ohio Parole Board unanimously recommended against clemency.
On October 17, 2006 a federal district judge in Ohio granted Lundgren a stay so that he could join a pending lawsuit over the state's execution procedures. His lawyers made a claim about his health in support of the request. The state attorney general's office said it would appeal. Late on Monday, October 23, a panel of the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati set the stay aside. The Governor, Bob Taft, denied clemency, and on October 24 the U.S. Supreme Court refused a last request to stop the execution.
Ohio executed Lundgren on October 24, 2006. He was 56. His wife and his son, together with other followers, were by then serving their own terms.
Ohio's current death penalty law took effect on October 19, 1981. Under it a murder can be punished by death only if it is charged as aggravated murder and an aggravating circumstance is specified in the indictment and proved beyond a reasonable doubt. Section 2903.01 of the Revised Code defines aggravated murder to include purposely causing a death with prior calculation and design, and purposely causing a death while committing, attempting to commit, or fleeing from kidnapping, among other felonies. Section 2929.04 lists the aggravating circumstances, among them that the offense "was part of a course of conduct involving the purposeful killing of or attempt to kill two or more persons." Both were charged against Lundgren.
Ohio's attorney general describes a capital trial as one in two phases, a guilt phase and a sentencing phase. After a conviction the inmate may appeal, may petition the trial court on grounds outside the trial record, may petition a federal court for habeas corpus, and may apply to the Governor for clemency with the help of the Ohio Parole Board. The state resumed executions on February 19, 1999, when Wilford Berry became the first person executed in Ohio since 1963. Lundgren's name is on the attorney general's list of executions as the twenty-fourth under the current law.
Lundgren told the sentencing jury that he was a prophet and should be spared, and the jury rejected that. In October 2006 his lawyers made a claim about his health in asking to join the lawsuit over execution procedures; the federal district judge granted a short stay, and the Sixth Circuit and the U.S. Supreme Court did not allow it to stand.
May 3, 1950: Jeffrey Don Lundgren is born.
1987: He is dismissed as a lay minister of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in Kirtland, and the Avery family moves from Missouri to Ohio.
April 17, 1989: Five members of the Avery family die in Kirtland.
January 5, 1990: Lundgren is indicted in Lake County.
January 7, 1990: He is arrested in California.
August 23, 1990: His trial opens in Lake County.
August 29, 1990: The jury finds him guilty of five counts of aggravated murder and five counts of kidnapping.
September 1990: The trial court imposes the sentence of death.
September 1990: His son is convicted of four counts of aggravated murder and four counts of kidnapping.
December 20, 1990: Ronald Luff is convicted in Toledo of five counts of aggravated murder and five counts of kidnapping.
August 30, 1995: The Supreme Court of Ohio affirms.
March 13, 2006: The Sixth Circuit upholds the conviction and sentence.
October 17, 2006: A federal district judge grants a stay.
October 23, 2006: The Sixth Circuit sets the stay aside.
October 24, 2006: The U.S. Supreme Court refuses a last stay request; Ohio executes Lundgren.