SANDPOINT -- State prosecutors contend they have solid reasons for asking that convicted murderer Darryl Kuehl be put to death.
In court documents filed Wednesday, Deputy Attorney General J. Scott James argued that Kuehl "exhibited utter disrespect for human life," was "motivated by greed" and had "less than a normal amount of provocation" for killing 53-year-old retired teacher Paul W. Gruber in 1994.
Kuehl, 46, was found guilty of first-degree murder on May 1. His sentencing is scheduled July 31 before 1st District Judge James Judd.
Gruber disappeared on Jan. 5, 1994. His body was not discovered until 17 months after he was reported missing. Detectives unearthed the victim from a shallow crawl-space grave beneath Gruber's home.
Kuehl was arrested in May 1996 in Gig Harbor, Wash.
In his arguments calling for a death sentence, James said witnesses testified that Gruber was shot with two different guns, that Kuehl killed Gruber for financial gain and that he assumed the dead man's identity.
James also listed Kuehl's jailhouse attempts to hire someone to murder the Bonner County lawmen scheduled to transport him back to Sandpoint from the Pierce County Jail in Tacoma, Wash.
"This would have been done for the purpose of an attempt to escape," James wrote. "If the defendant had been successful, it would have triggered other aggravating factors."
But in a letter to the Bonner County Daily Bee postmarked June 19, Kuehl continued declaring his innocence from the Shoshone County Jail in Wallace.
"I was framed and false things have been used against me," he wrote. "The real killer or killers are indeed still free and among you."
