MORGAN COUNTY, Ala. (WHNT) — Attorneys for Frederic Rogers, one of two men charged in a 2020 mass murder in Morgan County, have filed several motions addressing the death penalty and seeking to limit the emotional impact the evidence could have on a jury.
Rogers is charged alongside John Michael Legg with killing seven people inside a Valhermoso Springs home after a dispute involving their motorcycle club known as ‘7 Deadly Sins.’ Morgan County Sheriff Ron Puckett described it as a “crime that shocked the community and tore families apart.”
Rogers is set to go on trial on August 14, and Legg does not yet have a trial date.
Prosecutors have said they will seek the death penalty for Rogers.
The defense filed several motions last Friday, and a hearing in the case is set for June 24.
One of the motions filed by Rogers’s attorneys asks that the death penalty be barred unless a jury returns a unanimous verdict. His attorneys noted in a court filing that Alabama law allows a jury to impose a death sentence without a unanimous verdict.
Alabama law allows the death penalty if 10 of 12 jurors recommend the death sentence.
But, Rogers’s lawyers say that system, “ … fails to ensure that the death penalty is not imposed without a unanimous jury vote as required by the Constitution.”
His lawyers have also requested victim impact statements be prohibited during the trial. The defense argues statements from the victims’ families describing the victims’ personalities and the families suffering could prejudice the jury.
“This is precisely what the United States Supreme Court has condemned: “any decision to impose the death sentence [must] be, and appear to be, based on reason rather than caprice or emotion.”,” the defense motion argues.
The defense also wants the judge to warn jurors about crime scene photos they describe as “gruesome.” They argue any photos shown should not be used solely to cause prejudice or passion in jurors’ minds.
“The photographs of the victims and crime scenes which are bloody and distasteful are admitted under the Alabama Rules of Evidence upon the basis that they tend to illustrate, elucidate or corroborate some relevant material enquiry … However, all photographs which are admitted into evidence are admitted for the purpose of illustrating some point concerning the crime at issue,” the filing states.
The victims in the septuple homicide ranged from 17 to 45 years old. It took weeks for authorities to find and capture the suspects with multiple agencies assisting in processing the crime scene and searching for those responsible.
Almost three weeks after the killings, authorities found Legg and Rogers in Oregon. They were indicted on six counts of capital murder. Once extradited back to Morgan County, investigators said Rogers told them in an interview that he and Legg had started a motorcycle club called the 7 Deadly Sins, and they served as president and vice president.
In a recent court filing Morgan County District Attorney Scott Anderson said Rogers’s trial could take up to four weeks.
