John E. Robinson Sr. was 56 when he was arrested at his home in Olathe, Kansas, on June 2, 2000. To neighbors he was a family man who liked spending time with his grandchildren. To courts in two states he was a man with a long record of embezzlement and theft. Within days investigators had found five bodies in metal barrels, two on rural land he owned in Linn County, Kansas, and three in a storage unit he rented in Raymore, Missouri.
A Johnson County jury convicted him in October 2002, and he was sentenced to death in January 2003. In October 2003 he pleaded guilty in Cass County, Missouri, to five counts of first-degree murder, two of them for women whose bodies have never been found, and received life without parole on each. In 2015 the Kansas Supreme Court kept one capital murder conviction and the death sentence and reversed two of his other murder convictions on a technical ground of law, which the court said did not clear him of those deaths. In June 2026 Governor Laura Kelly denied his request to commute the death sentence. As of September 2026 he was 82, held at El Dorado Correctional Facility, and still appealing.
The prosecutor who took his Missouri pleas put the toll at eight women. The Kansas and Missouri records name Paula Godfrey, Lisa Stasi, Catherine Clampitt, Beverly Bonner, Sheila Faith, Debbie Faith, Izabela Lewicka and Suzette Trouten.
Little about Robinson's early years has been reliably reported. A Kansas City Public Library record of a 2001 Vanity Fair article by David McClintick summarizes that he was born in Illinois in 1943, came to Kansas City around 1964, worked at a series of businesses through the 1970s while embezzling from them, and moved to Johnson County, Kansas, in 1977. The Kansas Supreme Court recorded that he and his wife had been married since 1964.
The Associated Press, reporting on his Missouri pleas in 2003, said his criminal record of theft, embezzlement and other offenses dated to 1969. The Kansas Supreme Court described him as a self-employed entrepreneur who formed a company called Hydro-Gro in the 1970s and offered financial consulting through another, Equi II, in the 1980s.
The Pitch, a Kansas City weekly, traced part of that record in August 2000. Around 1980, shortly after Borden Foods bought a Kansas City snack food maker, Robinson was hired there as personnel manager. The plant manager came to suspect him of stealing company funds and reported him to Borden's security staff. In 1981 Robinson pleaded guilty to stealing a $6,000 company check. He served 60 days in the Clay County, Missouri, jail and was given five years' probation, and the company also sued him over false vouchers and forged checks. A mechanic at the plant told The Pitch that Robinson had seemed one of the most laid-back, nicest people there, and that learning of the theft floored him.
By 1985 he faced proceedings in Clay County for violating that probation. In court he pointed to his civic record, describing himself as a Boy Scout leader, a volunteer and a church pastor, according to The Pitch. A circuit judge revoked his bond after a woman testified against him, and the Missouri Court of Appeals reversed that decision because Robinson had not been allowed to confront his accuser. The Pitch reported that about two years later he was convicted of white-collar crimes in Kansas and served four years, then served two more in a Missouri prison for the old probation violation. In 1991 he wrote to a Clay County judge from a Missouri prison asking for early release and questioning whether his punishment was proportionate.
The Kansas Supreme Court recorded that he served time at the Western Missouri Correctional Center in Cameron, Missouri, on a nonperson felony and was released in the 1990s. At his 2002 sentencing hearing, defense witnesses cited his good conduct in Kansas and Missouri prisons from 1987 to 1992 (AP). After his release he published a trade magazine for the mobile home industry through a company he called Specialty Publications.
Paula Godfrey was 19 and lived in Olathe. Her father told the Missouri court in 2003 that she had been an excellent student and a terrific ice skater. She disappeared in 1984, and her body has never been found.
No charge was ever filed in her case until the Missouri plea agreement, although she had long been linked to Robinson. At the October 2003 plea hearing, Cass County Prosecutor Christopher Koster set out the account on which Robinson pleaded guilty, as reported by the Associated Press. Robinson met Godfrey in 1984 and hired her to help at business shows for Equi II. When she ran into trouble he lent her $800, and he introduced her to an associate who helped her find places to stay in Belton, Missouri, where her boyfriend could not find her. According to the prosecutor, Robinson went to a Belton motel to demand money, a fight followed, and he struck her in the head with a lamp while the associate blocked the door. That associate had since died and was never charged.
Her father spoke to Robinson directly in court. He said his wife had been a changed woman after Paula disappeared, and that Robinson had taken from the family their oldest daughter, whom they all loved. Paula's mother had died of cancer about ten years before the plea.
Lisa Stasi began dating her future husband when she was 18. They married in August 1984, and their daughter was born in September 1984, according to the Kansas Supreme Court. By the fall of 1984 she had separated from her husband and was moving between places with the baby (AP, 2003).
At the same time, Robinson was looking for a baby for his brother and his brother's wife, who wanted to adopt privately. In late 1984 he told a Kansas City social worker about a program he said he ran for young mothers and their babies. His brother sent him a $2,500 cashier's check that fall, made out to Equi II, and on January 10, 1985, a $3,000 check made out to an attorney, the court found.
In early January 1985 Robinson arranged a hotel room for Lisa Stasi and her daughter in Overland Park, which he later admitted. On January 9 she left with a man calling himself "John Osborne." A relative by marriage who saw her that day later identified "Osborne" as Robinson. That afternoon, the court recorded, Stasi called her mother-in-law in distress and said that "they" wanted her to sign four blank sheets of paper. A few days later a typed letter signed "Lisa" reached the Stasi family, saying she had left to start a new life with her baby. She was 19. She has never been found.
Robinson's wife testified that her husband brought a baby home during a January snowstorm. The child went to Robinson's brother and his wife, who adopted and renamed her. The adoption papers were later found to be forged. After Robinson's arrest in 2000 the adoptive parents raised questions about the child's origins, and a comparison of footprints matched her to Lisa Stasi's daughter, the Kansas Supreme Court recorded.
Catherine Clampitt was 27. She moved from Texas to the Kansas City area in 1987, and according to the Associated Press lived in Cass County. Her body has never been found.
At the plea hearing the prosecutor said Robinson met her in the summer of 1987 and hired her as a commissioned saleswoman for Equi II. Robinson told the court the arrangement fell through and she never worked for him. The prosecutor said she began visiting him once or twice a week, usually when she needed money, and that in May or June 1987 she called him and demanded money at her apartment in Belton. Two other people were there. Koster said Robinson struck her in the head with a "tire thumper," a short club used to check truck tires, and then told the second person, identified in court only as "G.T.," how to dispose of her body. Koster was not optimistic about charging that person: the best evidence he had, he said, was John Robinson himself.
Beverly Bonner, 49, lived in Cameron, Missouri, and worked as the librarian at the Western Missouri Correctional Center while Robinson was held there in 1992 and 1993. Her husband was a prison physician who treated Robinson for high blood pressure. He later called Robinson "such a smooth talker."
She filed for divorce in November 1993 and told her husband she was helping Robinson find property for a hydroponics project, the court recorded. Her family last saw her after the final divorce hearing in February 1994. She later told relatives she had a job that involved world travel (AP). Letters signed in her name came to her brothers every few months, some postmarked in Australia, France, the Netherlands and Kansas City. She did not come to a brother's wedding in September 1995 or to her son's funeral in October 1995. When the letters stopped in early 1997, the family went to the authorities. DNA from eight of nine envelopes tested matched Robinson.
Her former husband paid $1,000 a month in alimony for 18 months to a mailbox in Olathe. Robinson, using the name James Turner, deposited the checks into a business account opened in both their names, and his fingerprints were found on them. In 1993 he had rented a storage unit in Raymore, Missouri, in Bonner's name, and in January 1994 he rented a second unit there. Her remains were found in a sealed barrel in that second unit on June 5, 2000.
Sheila Faith, 45, was a widow from southern California. After her husband died in 1993 she and her daughter, Debbie, moved to Pueblo, Colorado, where they lived on about $1,200 a month in Social Security benefits (AP). Debbie had cerebral palsy, which limited her walking; the court gave her date of birth as October 17, 1978, and the Associated Press gave her age at death as 16.
In the spring of 1994 Sheila met a man named "John" through a personal ad and set off with Debbie to visit him. Her sisters later received typed letters whose signatures they doubted, one postmarked in Canada. In June 1994 the mailing address for the family's Social Security checks was changed to a private mailbox in Olathe that Robinson had rented in their names, and from July 1994 the checks were deposited into his business and personal accounts. In August 1994 a disability form purportedly signed by Sheila arrived with a medical report that appeared to carry the signature of Beverly Bonner's former husband, the prison physician; he said he had never treated Debbie. Officers seized checks for June 2000 from the mailbox. The Associated Press reported that the two were probably killed in the summer of 1994. Their remains were found in barrels in the Raymore storage unit on June 5, 2000.
Izabela Lewicka was born in Poland on April 11, 1978, moved with her family to Indiana at 11, and began studying at Purdue University in West Lafayette in the fall of 1996. Her parents hoped she would continue her fine arts studies there. A friend from a Purdue student group told the Kansas jury that Lewicka had met "John" online and said she would illustrate a manuscript for him. Lewicka told her parents only that she had an internship in Kansas, advertising for a small publisher, and would come back for her sophomore year. She moved to Kansas on June 8, 1997, and did not return.
Robinson leased a mailbox in her name and set up two apartments for her, telling landlords she was a graphics employee and at one point his adopted daughter. In August 1999 her parents drove to an Overland Park address they had for her and found a private mailbox company. Her father sent her emails asking about her well-being. The reply shown to jurors said she was happy and well, had a wonderful job and a man who loved her, and asked to be left alone.
The last confirmed sighting of Lewicka was at a bookstore shortly before the winter of 1999. On September 1, 1999, a $500 check from her account was made out to Specialty Publications, leaving $1. Her car insurance lapsed two days later. Robinson told a publishing broker she had been deported after being caught with marijuana, and told another acquaintance she had quit her job and run off with a boyfriend. In April 2000 her father received emails from her account describing travels in China. She was 21.
Suzette Trouten, 27, lived near her mother in the Monroe, Michigan, area and was from Newport. She met Robinson through sadomasochism websites, where prosecutors said he used the screen name "Slavemaster." She told her mother he had offered her $60,000 a year to care for his elderly father, whom she called "Papa John," with travel overseas. She moved to Kansas in February 2000, bringing her two Pekingese dogs in a moving truck he had rented, and on February 14 checked into a hotel in Lenexa.
Her mother spoke with her almost every day. The last call came at about 1 a.m. on March 1, 2000, when Suzette said they were leaving later that morning. A handwritten letter dated February 28 then arrived in an envelope postmarked in Kansas City on March 6, which her mother thought strange, since her daughter was supposed to be gone by then. When she called Robinson, he said Suzette had decided against the job and left with a man named Jim Turner, which the court found was one of his own aliases. Typed letters followed, postmarked in San Jose and in Veracruz, Mexico, and on March 24 an email from Suzette's account said she had left on her trip. Her mother and an aunt did not believe she had written them. On March 1 Robinson had picked up her dogs from a kennel and left them at a mobile home park, where animal control took them to a shelter.
On March 25, 2000, Overland Park police took a missing person report on Suzette Trouten and passed it to Lenexa police, who had jurisdiction. A task force of several agencies formed around Robinson. The Kansas Supreme Court listed the steps: trash pulls at his Olathe home from March 31; on April 25 a phone bill in his trash for property in Linn County; pen registers; and from May 22 a court-ordered wiretap on his cell phone.
On June 2, 2000, officers arrested Robinson at his Olathe home and searched the house and a storage unit. The first complaint charged him with aggravated sexual battery and theft. The Pitch reported that he was held on $5 million bail on charges of sexually assaulting two women he had met at area hotels. Missourinet reported the same week that the two had met him for sadomasochistic encounters. Neither woman is named here.
On June 3 a Johnson County judge issued a warrant for the Linn County property, about 17 acres in a secluded spot near La Cygne, roughly 60 miles south of Kansas City, where Robinson had moved a trailer in July 1998. A cadaver dog alerted on two yellow metal barrels standing in the open near a shed. Inside were the remains of Suzette Trouten and Izabela Lewicka. Autopsies followed on June 4. A neighbor later testified that in 1999 she had found Robinson digging holes in the dirt floor of a barn, and that he angrily told her to keep herself and her animals away.
On June 5 officers opened the Raymore storage unit and found a sealed barrel holding Beverly Bonner's remains and two more barrels, wrapped in plastic, holding the remains of Sheila and Debbie Faith. Detectives from Kansas and Missouri met that week to work out jurisdiction (Missourinet). On June 9 investigators searched a duplex where Robinson had stored Lewicka's furniture, and on October 12 they found blood spots matching her DNA in one of her apartments.
A medical examiner found that Suzette Trouten died from a blow to the left side of the head with a hard object. For the others, examiners described blunt-force injuries that could have been fatal but did not give a definite cause, the Kansas Supreme Court recorded.
The Johnson County complaint was amended on June 13, 2000, to add aggravated kidnapping and two counts of capital murder, and on July 28 to add first-degree premeditated murder and aggravated interference with parental custody, both concerning Lisa Stasi. A count of aggravated sexual battery involving one of the two women was dismissed at the preliminary hearing for lack of probable cause.
The capital charges rested on a part of Kansas law that makes it capital murder to kill more than one person as part of a common scheme or course of conduct. Prosecutors alleged that the killings of Trouten and Lewicka were each part of a scheme that also took in the murders of Beverly Bonner, Sheila Faith, Debbie Faith and Lisa Stasi. That choice, to bring the Missouri deaths into a Kansas capital case, became a central issue on appeal.
The case moved slowly. In 2001 Robinson replaced members of the state's death penalty defense unit with an inexperienced lawyer, who was later dismissed, and the court appointed Patrick Berrigan and Sean O'Brien of Kansas City, Missouri (AP, 2002). Johnson County District Judge John Anderson III presided. The defense said Robinson had a mood disorder; insanity is not a defense in Kansas. A University of Kansas law professor told the Associated Press that he thought Robinson had been trying to control the system.
The defense moved to move the trial out of Johnson County, presenting surveys of residents and some 72 Kansas City Star stories about the case. Judge Anderson denied the motion in March 2002 and denied three renewed motions during the trial, including one after a radio station staged a T-shirt stunt outside the courthouse. Jury selection began on September 16, 2002. Of 259 prospective jurors questioned, 167 were excused for cause, most because they had already formed opinions or because of their views on the death penalty. The jury was seated on October 4 and testimony began on October 7.
Izabela Lewicka's parents testified about the vague summer plans that took their daughter to Kansas and the years of terse emails that followed. Jurors saw the contents of a storage unit Robinson rented: the women's driver's licenses and Social Security cards, a written "slave" contract, and cards already signed and addressed that the state said he meant to send to their families. Prosecutors played a video of Robinson with Trouten. His wife testified that she knew of her husband's sexual life and affairs and still loved him.
The defense never conceded guilt. In closing it suggested that others might have been involved, pointing to the size of the barrels and the effort needed to hide the crimes (University Daily Kansan, 2002). Prosecutors told jurors that Robinson placed no value on the women he was accused of killing. The defense rested on October 25. At the close of the state's case the judge directed a verdict of acquittal on one count, and on October 28 the jury of six men and six women received six counts. On October 29, 2002, it convicted him on all six: aggravated kidnapping and capital murder of Suzette Trouten, capital murder of Izabela Lewicka, felony theft, first-degree premeditated murder of Lisa Stasi, and aggravated interference with Stasi's parental custody.
At the penalty phase the defense called only a few witnesses. Two said he would not be dangerous in prison, given his age and his record of good conduct there. His wife asked jurors to spare him, describing him as a devoted father and grandfather of 38 years and the outcome as devastating. Sean O'Brien asked for a delay to investigate Robinson's psychological history, saying the defense was not ready to present such evidence. Judge Anderson refused, citing delays caused by Robinson's earlier wish to change lawyers. Robinson was on suicide watch for most of the trial (AP).
The same jury recommended death on both capital counts, and in January 2003 the court imposed death on each. The court also imposed 246 months for the aggravated kidnapping, seven months for theft, and life with parole eligibility after 15 years for the murder of Lisa Stasi, along with a term for the custody count, according to the Kansas Supreme Court.
Cass County Prosecutor Christopher Koster had charged Robinson with capital murder in the deaths of Beverly Bonner, Sheila Faith and Debbie Faith. Beverly Bonner's former husband wanted a Missouri trial as a matter of principle, while a public defender questioned the cost of a second capital trial when Robinson was already under a death sentence (Lawrence Journal-World, November 2002). In March 2003 Robinson agreed to be sent to Missouri. Koster said he would rather end the case with one death penalty and eight recovered women, and that his wish to try the case took second place to law enforcement goals. Robinson was arraigned in Harrisonville that spring and pleas of not guilty were entered for him.
In October 2003, before Cass County Circuit Judge Joseph Dandurand in Harrisonville, Robinson pleaded guilty to five counts of first-degree murder: Beverly Bonner, Sheila Faith, Debbie Faith, Paula Godfrey and Catherine Clampitt. He received life without parole on each count, and Missouri gave up seeking death. He wore a dark suit and tie and answered the judge's questions about the killings calmly, the Associated Press reported. Koster called it far more difficult than any plea agreement he had worked on, and said that settling the Godfrey and Clampitt cases mattered more than another death sentence. He also said that what he had learned in the negotiations convinced him their bodies would never be found.
In 2004 the Kansas Supreme Court struck down the state's death penalty law, in a case that did not involve Robinson. Missourinet reported in March 2006 that a federal prosecutor in Kansas City had then indicted Robinson for kidnapping resulting in death in the case of Suzette Trouten, a charge that could carry a federal death sentence. After the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the Kansas ruling, federal prosecutors asked to drop that charge so that Robinson could be returned to Kansas, and his lawyers said they would oppose it (Missourinet, August 2006). The reports do not say how the federal case formally ended.
The Kansas Supreme Court heard Robinson's direct appeal in March 2015, in a session of nearly three hours. Paige Nichols argued for Robinson and asked the court to throw out the convictions and the death sentences. Among the issues were claims of prosecutorial misconduct, a juror who had brought a Bible into deliberations, and the argument that the state had misapplied the 1994 death penalty law by tying the Missouri killings to the Kansas counts. Assistant District Attorneys Jacob Gontesky and Steve Obermeier said any errors were harmless (KSNT, AP).
The court ruled on November 6, 2015, in a 415-page opinion by Justice Caleb Stegall. It affirmed the capital murder conviction for Suzette Trouten (Count II) and the death sentence on it. It reversed the capital murder conviction for Izabela Lewicka (Count III) and the first-degree murder conviction for Lisa Stasi (Count V) as multiplicitous with Count II: because the same killings were used to support each charge, the extra convictions punished him twice for the same offense, in violation of double jeopardy. It affirmed the other convictions, vacated the designation of certain crimes as sexually motivated, and sent the case back to correct the journal entry. Stegall wrote that the ruling did not in any way clear Robinson of those deaths (KOAM, 2026). The court acknowledged errors at trial but held that together they did not substantially prejudice him (Courthouse News Service).
Justice Lee Johnson dissented. He would have held that the prosecution failed to prove the capital charges and that the death penalty violates Section 9 of the Kansas Bill of Rights, and he wrote that the court should not cover for a prosecutor's charging mistakes. It was the first time the Kansas Supreme Court had upheld a death sentence since the state restored capital punishment in 1994 (AP; Courthouse News Service). Paul Morrison, the former Johnson County district attorney who had led the prosecution, said he was gratified. The Associated Press reported that nine men were on Kansas death row at the time.
In October 2016 the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the case. Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt said the decision left the capital murder conviction and death sentence intact, called it the first Kansas death penalty case to exhaust its direct appeals since 1994, and said the case would return to the Kansas courts (KSAL).
Robinson then brought a post-conviction challenge in Johnson County. District Judge Robert Wonnell rejected it, and the Kansas Supreme Court heard his appeal in September 2026 (Kansas Reflector). His lawyer, Madeline Cohen, argued that his trial lawyers had not understood state law on how jurors weigh the death penalty after a guilty verdict and had not challenged the single aggravating factor, the "common scheme" theory. She said the defect in his case came from the way the prosecution had charged it. She acknowledged that he was unlikely to be acquitted of murder but argued that he could have avoided a death sentence. Gontesky, for the state, said the defense team had been experienced and multidisciplinary and that Robinson had not shown a reasonable probability of a different result. Justice Stegall said he struggled with faulting lawyers for not anticipating a later change in the law. The court gave no decision that day.
Under Kansas procedure a death-sentenced prisoner asks the Prisoner Review Board for commutation. The board must give 30 days' notice to victims, the prosecutor and the trial judge, and then has up to 120 days to report to the governor, who generally cannot act before that report, according to the governor's office.
On June 9, 2026, Attorney General Kris Kobach urged Governor Kelly to deny clemency to eight inmates under death sentences, warning against grants in the final weeks of a governor's term (Kansas Reflector). Robinson's was the only request before her. On June 18, 2026, Kelly denied it. Her statement noted that Kansas reinstated the death penalty in 1994 and that it remains the law, and said that because his request showed neither a credible claim of innocence nor evidence of manifest injustice, she had denied it. Her office declined to say what criteria she had weighed.
Cohen said Robinson was almost 83 and one of the oldest people on death row in the United States, and that given his age, his medical condition and the pending litigation it was nearly certain he would die of natural causes before Kansas could execute him. She said the denial meant the state would keep spending resources defending the sentence instead of settling the case with life without parole, and that the courts might yet overturn it because of errors including trial lawyers who did, in her words, virtually no investigation (WIBW; KCTV5; KOAM). The case remained pending before the Kansas Supreme Court, and she said it could be many years before an execution date could be set.
As of September 15, 2026, Robinson was 82 and held at El Dorado Correctional Facility in Kansas, with his post-conviction appeal under submission at the Kansas Supreme Court (Kansas Reflector). Kansas has carried out no execution since 1965, and the Kansas Reflector reported in June 2026 that no one had been sentenced to death in the state in a decade. His Missouri sentences of life without parole stand.
How many victims. The prosecutor who took the Missouri pleas said Robinson killed eight women, and those eight are the women covered by his convictions and pleas in the two states. The Pitch reported in August 2000 that he was then linked to 11 dead, missing or sexually assaulted women; that figure was never tested in court and no further killings were charged.
Legal standing of the Lewicka and Stasi convictions. A jury convicted Robinson of murdering both women, and those convictions were reversed in 2015 on double jeopardy grounds, not for lack of evidence. Both killings remain part of the common scheme on which his surviving capital conviction rests. Several 2026 news reports describe him as convicted of killing three women in Kansas without noting the reversals.
Others involved. At trial the defense suggested others may have taken part. The Missouri prosecutor described a now-dead associate as present at Paula Godfrey's killing and a person known as "G.T." as present at Catherine Clampitt's. Neither was charged.
Ages and details. Sources differ on several victims' ages: Suzette Trouten 27 (most reports) or 28 (AP, September 2002); Izabela Lewicka 21 or 22; Debbie Faith 15 or 16. One 2003 AP summary placed the Missouri storage unit in Raytown; court records and all other reports place it in Raymore.
1943: Robinson born in Illinois.
1964: marries; around this time comes to Kansas City.
1969: earliest offense in his record of theft and embezzlement, per the Associated Press.
1977: moves to Johnson County, Kansas.
1981: pleads guilty to stealing a company check; 60 days in jail and probation.
1984: Paula Godfrey disappears.
January 9, 1985: Lisa Stasi last seen; her infant daughter is passed to Robinson's brother's family.
1987: Catherine Clampitt killed, according to the Missouri prosecutor.
About 1987 to the early 1990s: imprisoned in Kansas and Missouri.
1992 to 1993: meets Beverly Bonner at the Western Missouri Correctional Center.
February 1994: Bonner last seen by her family.
Spring and summer 1994: Sheila and Debbie Faith leave Colorado to meet "John."
June 8, 1997: Izabela Lewicka moves to Kansas.
1999: Lewicka last seen.
February 2000: Suzette Trouten moves to Kansas.
March 1, 2000: Trouten's last call to her mother.
March 25, 2000: missing person report on Trouten.
June 2, 2000: Robinson arrested in Olathe.
June 3, 2000: two bodies found in barrels in Linn County.
June 5, 2000: three bodies found in barrels in Raymore, Missouri.
September 16, 2002: jury selection begins in Olathe.
October 29, 2002: convicted on six counts.
January 2003: sentenced to death on both capital counts.
October 2003: pleads guilty in Cass County, Missouri, to five murders; life without parole on each.
2006: federal kidnapping charge filed, then prosecutors move to drop it.
March 2015: Kansas Supreme Court hears the direct appeal.
November 6, 2015: one capital conviction and the death sentence affirmed; two murder convictions reversed as multiplicitous.
October 2016: U.S. Supreme Court declines review.
June 18, 2026: Governor Kelly denies clemency.
September 2026: Kansas Supreme Court hears the post-conviction appeal; pending as of September 15, 2026.