Why 2 inmates received lethal injection after failed prison escape, murder

PIEDMONT, S.D. — The night that Eric Donald Robert stalked the driver of a 1993 Oldsmobile Cutlass was the first crime in a chain of events that would land him on death row. He followed the 18-year-old driver, Briana St. Clair, on her way to work near Blackhawk, South Dakota, before flicking on strobe lights resembling a police squad car from inside his red 1989 Chevrolet pickup truck, according to the Sioux Falls Argus-Leader. St. Clair pulled over around 2 a.m. and Robert walked to the driver’s side door, telling her he was a plainclothes police officer working narcotics. He asked her to perform field-type sobriety tests and then said he needed to search her trunk. She objected. He grabbed her and forced her into the trunk of her car. “I put you in here to teach you a lesson,” St. Clair said he told her. Robert took $225 from the vehicle, then drove his truck two blocks away, returning to drive her car to a nearby location. Unknown to him, however, St.

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