Lotter: Death sentence should be overturned

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By ANNA JO BRATTON / The Associated Press

TECUMSEH — John Lotter, convicted of killing Teena Brandon in 1993, is among those arguing that the state can no longer execute him after electrocution was declared unconstitutional.

But Lotter — whose crimes inspired the 1999 movie “Boys Don’t Cry” — said he’s not counting on Nebraska judges to see it his way.

“I don’t try to get my hopes up,” Lotter said in an interview with The Associated Press at the Tecumseh State Correctional Institution. “If you do that, you’re going to be on a roller coaster.”

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John Lotter

John Lotter

The state Supreme Court ruled in February that electrocution is cruel and unusual punishment and left Nebraska without a means of execution.

Lotter was sentenced to death in 1996 for killing Teena Brandon, Lisa Lambert and Phillip DeVine in a farmhouse near Humboldt after Brandon reported that Lotter and Thomas Nissen had raped her. Brandon was female but for a time lived as a man in rural southeast Nebraska.

Brandon’s mother, JoAnn Brandon, said she’d be angry if Lotter avoids the death penalty because of a change in method.

Lethal injection almost seems too humane, “like putting to sleep a cat or a dog,” Brandon said.

“They didn’t take any pity on the three people they killed,” Brandon said of Lotter and Nissen. “They were cruel and unusual.”

Gov. Dave Heineman has asked the attorney general to look into the possible methods of execution, a process he says could take several months. Lethal injection is the most likely, although firing squad, hanging and the gas chamber could be options.

Lawyers involved in those death-row cases are now asking if an inmate who is sentenced to die in the electric chair can be executed by another means if the state changes the law.

Attorney General Jon Bruning said the state’s highest court made it clear in its ruling that the men remain sentenced to death.

But defense lawyer Paula Hutchinson, who has represented several Nebraska death-row inmates including Lotter, said she hasn’t heard any coherent explanation to explain how the 10 men on death row could constitutionally be resentenced to death under a new method.

She said others on death row likely share Lotter’s careful skepticism.

“My sense of the attitude among the persons on death row is, don’t get your hopes up,” said Hutchinson, who isn’t currently representing Lotter. “My sense is they’re wary.”

Lotter said his attorneys are waiting to see what method is put in place.

Meanwhile Erick Vela, who pleaded guilty to five counts of first-degree murder in the 2002 Norfolk bank shootings, has asked his sentence be changed to life imprisonment, citing the state’s lack of a constitutional method of execution.

Lotter is housed with other death row inmates, away from the general population. He’s never seen the movie that made his case famous.

He said he understands that every time he files a new appeal and articles are written, the victims’ families relive the pain.

But he maintains he’s innocent, and wants to get out of prison and get his life back.

At a minimum he’d like to get off death row to buy some time.

“It doesn’t do me any good if I’m dead,” Lotter said.

Nissen testified that he stabbed Brandon but that Lotter fired all the shots, including the one that killed Brandon.

He’s serving a life sentence while Lotter was sentenced to death.

Last year, Nissen changed his story, saying he shot all three. A Richardson County District Court judge denied Lotter’s request for a new trial in November, but Lotter is appealing that ruling to the state Supreme Court.

JoAnn Brandon said there’s no doubt in her mind that Lotter killed her daughter and the others. She’s tired of all the appeals.

“It just dredges up all the memories,” she said. “Makes you go through hell all over again.”

She said people should remember the victims, who are waiting for justice.

“We shouldn’t have to wait 15, 16, 17 years,” she said. “It didn’t take them any time to hunt my daughter down and murder her.”

Lotter said the fact that he won’t die in the electric chair isn’t too comforting. He doesn’t buy suggestions that lethal injection is more humane than electrocution. A drug that paralyzes the body likely just hides the suffering, he said.

“You put a cover over it,” he said. “How is that humane?”

“Being dead is dead.”