A three-judge panel in Johnson County will hear arguments Thursday and make a decision on whether or not Patrick Schroeder will get the death penalty.
Schroeder has killed multiple people. The first was a farm owner, whom he brutally beat to death and robbed in 2006. The other occurred in 2017 when he killed his cell mate in the Tecumseh State Penitentiary.
Patrick Schroeder told NET's Bill Kelly in a phone interview from prison that he believes in the death penalty.
"That's another reason I won't fight the death penalty because I feel if they give me another life sentence, I honestly feel that I will kill again. There's no emotion there," Schroeder said to Kelly.
Nebraska has executed three convicted killers since the State Supreme Court re-instated capital punishment in 1976:
- Harold "Willi" Otey, executed in 1994
- John Joubert, executed in 1996
- Robert Williams, executed in 1997
All three convicted killers died in the electric chair. In 2008, the Nebraska Supreme Court ruled that electrocution is cruel and unusual punishment, so prison officials switched to lethal injection.
Nebraska has yet to use lethal injection in any executions.
Schroeder is defending himself in the hearing, which comes amid a lawsuit by the ACLU against the State for how it obtained the drugs given to inmates who receive the death penalty.
If Patrick Schroeder is sentenced to death, he would become the 12th man on Nebraska's death row.
The most recently added is Nikko Jenkins, who was sentenced to death last May for his four murders in August 2013.
Others on death row include Roy Ellis, who was sentenced to death for the 2005 kidnapping and murder of 12-year-old Amber Harrison.
The man with the most time on death row is Carey Dean Moore. He was sentenced to death for the 1979 murder of two Omaha cab drivers.
Moore requested parole claiming state officials were either too lazy or too incompetent to execute him.
That parole request was unanimously denied by the state parole board on April 17.
