{"id":182019,"date":"2026-02-17T22:14:36","date_gmt":"2026-02-17T22:14:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/182019\/"},"modified":"2026-02-17T22:14:36","modified_gmt":"2026-02-17T22:14:36","slug":"convicted-killer-david-keith-rogers-set-for-hearing-wednesday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/182019\/","title":{"rendered":"Convicted killer David Keith Rogers set for hearing Wednesday"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KGET) \u2014 David Keith Rogers, the former Kern County sheriff\u2019s 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\u2019ll receive death or life without parole. <\/p>\n<p>Only the penalty phase will be retried \u2014 Rogers\u2019 murder convictions remain intact. <\/p>\n<p>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. <\/p>\n<p>\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.kget.com\/news\/local-news\/thousands-visit-kernville-for-whiskey-flat-days-2026\/?ipid=promo-link-block1\" class=\"promo-link__link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><br \/>\n\t\tThousands visit Kernville for Whiskey Flat Days\t<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Rogers, 79, was previously sentenced to death \u2014 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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KGET) \u2014 David Keith Rogers, the former Kern County sheriff\u2019s deputy who murdered a woman and&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":182020,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[151,153,152],"class_list":{"0":"post-182019","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bakersfield","8":"tag-bakersfield","9":"tag-bakersfield-headlines","10":"tag-bakersfield-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182019"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182019\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/182020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}