BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KGET) — David Keith Rogers, the former Kern County sheriff’s deputy who murdered a woman and a teen girl in the 1980s, has a hearing Wednesday to set a retrial date to determine if he’ll receive death or life without parole.
Only the penalty phase will be retried — Rogers’ murder convictions remain intact.
His first penalty phase retrial, held in 2023, ended with a jury deadlocked 10-2 in favor of him being sentenced to death. The alternative is life without parole.
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Rogers, 79, was previously sentenced to death — but the state Supreme Court in 2019 overturned that sentence after determining a prosecution witness whose testimony was used during the penalty phase falsely testified Rogers sexually assaulted her.
In 1988, Rogers was convicted of killing Janine Benintende, 20, in 1986 and Tracie Clark, 15, a year later, shooting them multiple times then dumping their bodies in the Arvin-Edison canal. Both Benintende and Clark, who was three months pregnant when killed, were picked up by Rogers while working as prostitutes.