Doughnut shop killing: US executes gay man Charles Rhines, whose lawyer said jurors ‘thought shouldn’t spend life in prison with men’
- Charles Rhines had confessed to killing a former co-worker while robbing a South Dakota doughnut shop in 1992
- His lawyers asked for a court review of evidence that some jurors knew Rhines was gay and believed he would enjoy life in prison with other men
The US state of South Dakota on Monday executed an inmate whose lawyer said that jurors at his trial were prejudiced against him because he was gay.
Charles Rhines, 63, was put to death by lethal injection soon after the Supreme Court rejected a last-ditch appeal by his lawyers claiming that his trial was tainted.
Rhines was sentenced to death in 1993 for murdering Donnivan Schaeffer, 22, an employee at Dig ‘Em Donuts in Rapid City, during a burglary of the doughnut shop on March 8, 1992, weeks after Rhines had quit working there.
“It is very sad and profoundly unjust that the State of South Dakota today executed Charles Rhines, a gay man, without any court ever hearing the evidence of gay bias that infected the jury’s decision to sentence him to death,” his lawyer Shawn Nolan said.
According to a court filing on Rhines’ behalf, a juror who voted for the death penalty said that “we also knew that (Rhines) was a homosexual and thought that he shouldn’t be able to spend his life with men in prison”.