Unit
1012 chose these two articles to remind the public how dangerous it is to let
murderers live. Please see the case of Dennis Stanworth.
INTERNET SOURCE: http://www.mercurynews.com/crime-courts/ci_22358879/dennis-stanworth-one-107-death-row-inmates-spared
Dennis Stanworth third
death row inmate spared by state court accused of killing again
By
Matthias Gafni
Contra
Costa Times
Posted:
01/13/2013 07:36:10 AM PST
Updated:
01/14/2013 05:13:17 AM PST
Dennis
Stanworth is a member of the notorious class of '72.
More
than 100 death row inmates were spared the gas chamber in 1972 after the
California Supreme Court ruled capital punishment unconstitutional.
His
classmates all got life sentences, including the likes of serial killer Charles
Manson and Sirhan Sirhan, Robert F. Kennedy's assassin. But not all served
their full sentences and some who were released went on to commit new crimes.
Last
week, Stanworth -- who killed two Pinole girls in 1966, and raped four other
women in the Bay Area -- became the third person paroled from death row to be
accused of killing again as a free man. All three of those cases involved Bay
Area slayings.
Police
say Stanworth called them Wednesday
and admitted to killing his 90-year-old mother in his Vallejo home about two
months earlier. Her body was found outside the house, a prosecutor said.
Now 70
and appearing frail, Stanworth came to a hearing Friday in Solano County
Superior Court in a wheelchair and exclaimed: "It's the third time,"
and "I plead guilty to everything."
No formal
plea, however, was entered as his defense attorney requested a week delay.
Victim
advocates are fuming that Stanworth was paroled in 1990 despite having a
horrific rap sheet. The killer himself pleaded for death.
Stanworth
would never have been paroled today, according to Stanford University law professor
Robert Weisberg, who tracks criminal justice trends and who calls this case is
an anomaly.
Almost 40
percent of the 107 death row inmates in the class of '72 had been released on
parole, according to a 2003 Contra Costa Times article analyzing Department of
Corrections data. About a third of those released committed new crimes. That
rate was far lower than the 65 percent, three-year recidivism rate for all
parolees released from prison during 2006-07, the most current figures from the
Department of Corrections.
In the
class of '72, as of 2003, 42 people have been paroled and 24 died in prison. Of
the 42 released, 12 had been charged with or convicted of new crimes.
The
Times' 2003 analysis also looked at the class of '76, consisting of 67 people on
death row who got life sentences after the state's second capital punishment
law was again ruled unconstitutional in 1976. Six of those formerly condemned
inmates were paroled, with only one, a Contra Costa man, reoffending.
Why the
release?
Stanworth
confessed in 1966 to murdering two Pinole teens on Aug. 1, 1966, and raping one
of the girls after he shot them both in the head. He also confessed to the
savage kidnap and rapes of four other women in Berkeley, Richmond, El Sobrante
and Pacifica during a 10-month span. He pleaded guilty, and during his
sentencing phase he begged the judge to send him to the gas chamber.
Despite
objecting to an appeal and again pleading to be put to death, his case was
automatically reviewed in 1969 and the state Supreme Court found jurors were
improperly dismissed and reversed the decision. He was sentenced again to death
in 1974 after a new trial, but the sentence was automatically commuted to life
in prison because of the 1972 Supreme Court decision that banned the death penalty.
In 1979,
Stanworth was deemed fit for parole after attending therapy and conducting
himself well in prison. He was eventually released in 1990.
Life
without a possibility of parole became a sentencing option in 1978.
 |
| Dennis Stanworth in 2013, left, and in the 1960s ( (Mike Jory/Times-Herald; Contra Costa County Sheriff's Office) |
"It
was the last gasp in the '70s in the kind of loose, rehab-oriented" courts
and criminal justice system, said the co-director of the Stanford Criminal
Justice Center.
"The
real question is why he got paroled in 1990. What in the world was brought
before them ... to let a 48-year-old man with that criminal record go
free?" Weisberg said.
"And
yet it's hard to say it's a failure of the parole system if you don't commit
another crime for 22 years," he said.
Governors
also hold the power to deny any prisoner parole. Former Gov. Pete Wilson, a
Republican who held the office from 1991 to 1999, allowed many of the board's
decisions to stand, while Democrat Gray Davis, who served from 1999 to 2003,
overturned almost 300 of the board's decisions.
Weisberg
could not imagine someone with Stanworth's criminal record being released.
"The
rape-murder and other rapes, under any regime, would not be very
sympathetic," Weisberg said.
Other
class of '72 cases
In
another case tied to a class of '72 parolee, jogger Armida Wiltsey's body was
found Nov. 14, 1978, in brush near the Lafayette Reservoir trail. She had been
strangled and had evidence of binding on her wrists.
Her
slaying was unsolved for decades, but DNA found under Wiltsey's fingernail
matched hair from Darryl Kemp, who was serving a life sentence in Texas for
three rapes.
Kemp had
been on death row for two rapes and the rape and murder of a Los Angeles nurse
in the 1950s. After the 1972 court decision, his sentence was commuted to life,
and he was paroled in 1978. He killed Wiltsey four months after his release.
Kemp was
convicted and again sentenced to death in 2009; he awaits execution in San
Quentin State Prison.
Robert
Lee Massie, a former death row inmate from San Francisco, also killed only
months after his parole release in 1978. He was again condemned and executed in
2001.
It is
unusual for longtime prisoners who are paroled at older ages to kill again,
Weisberg said.
"Paroling
a murderer who has served a long sentence is empirically a pretty safe
proposition," he said. "The recidivism rate for lifers on parole is
pretty low."
However,
inmates with sex crime backgrounds do not fall into that category, the law
professor said.
'He was
evil'
Any
recidivism rate at all troubles many victim rights advocates.
Evelyn
McGann's son Richard was stabbed 53 times and killed in 1984 by a parolee two
weeks after his release. She is the chapter leader of Contra Costa Co./East Bay
Chapter, Parents of Murdered Children, Inc.
The San
Pablo woman remembered Stanworth's case in 1966, after the bodies of Pinole
teens Susan Muriel Box and Caree Lee Collison were found in a bush overlooking
San Pablo Bay. When she read last week investigators believe Stanworth killed
again, she could not believe he was a free man.
"This
man should never have been paroled -- ever," McGann said. "Not
because he said he wanted to get the death penalty, but because he deserved the
death penalty. He was evil."
Ricky Lee
Egberto, 29, the killer of McGann's son, is serving two life sentences without
the possibility of parole, and the mother cannot imagine him being free.
"Our
victims are gone forever," she said. "They don't get a
reprieve."
 |
|
In 1968, Dennis Stanworth was on Death Row
for killing two teenage girls he picked up hitchhiking in Pinole. Now 70,
Stanworth has reportedly told police that he killed his 90-year-old mother.
(PHOTO SOURCE: http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Vallejo-man-allegedly-kills-mother-90-Ex-Death-4181570.php#photo-4013397)
|
INTERNET SOURCE: http://www.timesheraldonline.com/ci_22728171/death-penalty-defended
Death penalty defended
Published By Times Herald
Posted: 03/06/2013 01:03:55 AM PST
OK, it has finally happened ... again! The
Times-Herald's front page showed Dennis Fink Stanworth who allegedly murdered
his mother, 90. In 1966 he abducted two 15-year-old girls, raped and murdered
them both, left one Caree Lee Collison for dead and she lived another 40 days
and passed.
Her mother was by her side hoping against hope for
naught. The "Fink" goes on a raping spree with several more women,
but one escapes her bonds and is able to identify him and he is brought to
justice. Oh, not really.
Sure he received the death penalty, but is released
on parole in 1990. He spends 17 years in prison and is released on good
behavior.
"Fink" admits to everything, all the
girls (whose lives have been irreversibly altered) he welcomes his death
sentence and begs to be put away.
Our system doesn't work! Bad people are bad, they
are murderers and child rapists and freely admit that if they are released they
will carry on.
The ACLU and spineless ANTI-death penalty wonks
have gained such a foothold on our society that we, even though we continue to
approve of the death penalty, are bullied into thinking we are doing something
wrong by punishing misdeeds.
The ANTIs have finally obfuscated the issue and put
up such roadblocks to execution that they can look us in the face and
rightfully say that it's cheaper to put someone in prison for life than it is
to enact the death penalty.
Of course if you delay the process 20 plus years so
that legal fees and extra bodily protection is needed you have a point. You
won't allow the system to work. But the ANTIs are the ones who have clogged the
system! Now it's the injection system, might cause some pain! What? But that is
crap!
All the arguments against the death penalty after
all is said and done is that "you wouldn't want to execute an innocent
man". No duh. That didn't go without saying?
Folks, we didn't have DNA as an investigative tool
in 1966. If a potential perp is found to have the victim's DNA on their stuff,
and other contributing factors we've got our man.
Conversely, if an already incarcerated man is
exonerated from a conviction, I say bravo, well done. I would spearhead a
process to that end gladly. Not the ANTIs, they won't allow us the same
privilege to use the same tool to execute bad guys.
David Yates
Vallejo
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