Judge throws out kidnapping conviction in Mount Rose killings

RENO -- A judge has thrown out the conviction of a man sentenced to four life prison terms for the 1991 kidnapping of two Carson City men killed along the Mount Rose Highway.

Roger Stroup's release from prison is imminent, his attorneys said.

Washoe District Judge James Hardesty on Thursday said Stroup's trial lawyers, Jerry Polaha and Marc Picker, failed to defend him properly because they didn't realize that the statute of limitations on the kidnapping charge had expired by the time Stroup was charged in 1995.

The time limit on kidnapping is three years.

"The court finds that in these respects, counsels' representation fell below an objective standard of reasonableness under prevailing professional norms," Hardesty said in his order dismissing the kidnapping charges and granting a new trial.

Polaha, now a fellow Washoe District Court judge, was defeated by Hardesty in the 1998 election but was appointed to the bench by the governor in 1999, elected in 2000 and re-elected last year.

Stroup, 35, was acquitted of murder but convicted of kidnapping Daniel Rasmussen and Jack Strawbridge from a convenience store on Long Street. Their bullet-riddled bodies were found near the Mount Rose Ski Area in 1991.

Instead of seeking a new trial, Stroup pleaded guilty Thursday to one count of coercion with physical force and was sentenced to time served.

Stroup's father, Bobby Stroup, was convicted of the killings in 2001.

Deputy District Attorney Terry McCarthy said the kidnap and murder charges would not be refiled.

Stroup said the cases and conviction have been a nightmare and he agreed to the plea to end the matter.

"It brings a means to an end for me," he told a Reno newspaper.

District Attorney Richard Gammick blamed federal officials when asked why prosecutors waited until 1995 to file charges against Stroup.

Gammick was a chief deputy under District Attorney Dorothy Nash Holmes at the time, he said, and objected strongly when she ordered him to turn the case over to the U.S. attorney's office. They wanted to handle the murders as part of a larger federal investigation into drug dealing and other killings, he said.

After being elected in 1994, Gammick said, he took the case back "because they had not taken action on it" and charged Stroup with capital murder and kidnapping charges.

Because the focus was on the murder charges, both the prosecution and defense either overlooked or downplayed the statute of limitations on the two counts of kidnapping, Gammick said.

"We felt the jury would convict him of murder charges," he said.

When Stroup was acquitted of murder, the kidnapping charges became the only avenue for ensuring he would be sent to prison, Gammick said.