[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----N.C., FLA., ALA., ARK., CALIF.

[Rick Halperin]

Nov. 10



NORTH CAROLINA:

Asheville man removed from death row 19 later, will serve life without parole 
for murder


There's 1 less person on death row in North Carolina after an
Asheville man — convicted of murder nearly 20 years earlier — was re-sentenced 
to life without parole Friday afternoon.

James Lewis Morgan, 63, had been awaiting execution since 1999, when he was 
found guilty of murdering an Asheville woman.

Due Process

A Buncombe County jury at the time found that Morgan had stabbed Patrina King 
48 times in front of his mother's home on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. 
Morgan Killed King the day after Thanksgiving 2 years before he was sentenced.

In court Friday, nobody disputed Morgan's conviction. But Morgan's attorneys — 
Elizabeth Hambourger and Mark Kleinschmidt — said that the court had violated 
their client's right to due process in handling his sentencing more than a 
decade prior.

Hambourger, of Durham, and Kleinschmidt, of Chapel Hill, said that Morgan was 
represented by 5 different attorneys in a matter of months and had not been 
afforded proper psychological evaluation prior to his sentencing in 1999, which 
the Supreme Court has said is a necessary component of indigent defense 
services.

As a result, the all-white jury that sentenced Morgan to death knew nothing of 
the severe traumatic brain injuries that Morgan had suffered "during the course 
of his life, starting in childhood," Kleinschmidt told Superior Court Judge 
Alan Z. Thornburg Friday.

"He can't control his emotions in ways we do," Kleinschmidt told the Citizen 
Times after the re-sentencing. "That doesn't mean his actions were excusable. 
But this is about what the appropriate punishment is in this instance."

Hambourger, who works with the Center for Death Penalty Litigation, added that 
the death penalty "is supposed to be reserved for the worst of the worst."

Though Morgan's crime was gruesome — and he'd been convicted of second degree 
murder in 1976 — neuropsychological testing conducted after his original 
sentencing showed that his cognitive ability had been severely limited due to 
trauma before he fatally stabbed King, Hambourger said.

"Today, this type of evidence frequently persuades juries to impose life 
sentences instead of death," Buncombe County District Attorney wrote in a press 
release announcing the re-sentencing.

Williams consented to the defense's request for re-sentencing on these grounds 
— and after having spoken with King's father, James, he said.

In court, he explained that while he was reviewing the defense's motion "it was 
clear certain due process rights were violated in 1999."

He also cited as precedent a case out of Charlotte that featured similar 
circumstances — and was also litigated by Kleinschmidt. The defendant in that 
case, Melvin J. Hardy, was also removed from death row and is now serving a 
life sentence without parole.

"Justice is a difficult process," Williams told the Citizen Times after the 
hearing Friday.

Nobody knows that better than the family members of King. Her father and sister 
were among those present at Friday's hearing.

Patrina's sister, Jan King, told Morgan Friday that she forgave him "a long 
time ago, but I'm still mad as hell."

"You took my sister away from her kids that I had to raise," she said.

James King, Patrina's father, said that he had mixed feelings about the 
re-sentencing. On one hand, he doesn't believe in the death penalty, he said. 
On the other, Morgan took his daughter from him. Took the mother from his 
grandchildren.

>From his seat in the audience, James King told the court that he tossed and 
turned Thursday night, unable to sleep thinking about his daughter's murder. He 
said he woke up thinking about what Patrina must have felt as the knife entered 
her for the 1st time.

"I felt that pain myself," he said.

Hambourger read an apology prepared by Morgan. But it was clear from the King 
family's reaction that no apology was going to ease their pain Friday.

If nothing else, Morgan's re-sentencing will bring legal finality to the case, 
which has been ongoing since roughly the time of his 1st sentencing, Williams 
said. Morgan's new sentence was granted on the condition that he dropped all 
outstanding appeals claims.

Williams said Friday that the King family will never have to face Patrina's 
killer in court again.

North Carolina's death row population — 141 inmates now — is the 6th largest in 
the country, according to a report recently published by the Center for Death 
Penalty Litigation. 7 of those inmates were sentenced in Buncombe County.

The last execution performed in the state was in 2006.

(source: Asheville Citizen-Times)






FLORIDA:

  For the 28th time, Florida sentenced a man to death ... only to realize it 
made a mistake----Clemente Aguirre exonerated in double-murder


The state of Florida spent the past 14 years trying to kill Clemente 
Aguirre-Jarquin.

The zeal to execute this undocumented immigrant from Honduras for a gruesome 
double murder was unrelenting ... even after someone else confessed to the 
crimes.

Even after evidence showed his blood wasn’t at the crime scene where victims 
had been stabbed more than 130 times — and that blood from the woman who’d 
confessed was there — the state still wanted him dead.

That finally changed this past week. The state admitted flaws in its case and 
dropped all charges against the man who’d been convicted and imprisoned for 
nearly 14 years.

In most places, news that the state wrongly sent someone to death row would be 
shocking.

But in Florida, it’s almost routine.

About once every 18 months, Florida realizes it incorrectly sentenced someone 
to die.

We’ve taken 28 people off death row over the last 45 years — more than any 
other state in America.

And the politicians don’t seem to care. Instead of pushing for reform, they 
push things like the “Timely Justice Act” … so we can kill people faster.

It plays well in the polls. But killing without accuracy isn’t justice. It’s 
blood lust.

In Aguirre-Jarquin’s case, someone else actually confessed 5 times to 4 people. 
And not just any someone. The confessor was the daughter and granddaughter of 
the victims … the same person who helped prosecutors convict Aguirre-Jarquin 
back in 2006 by testifying against him.

After defense attorneys learned all this — that Williams had repeatedly 
confessed and had a history of violent behavior — they assumed the case would 
be over.

They were wrong.

Judge Jessica Recksiedler refused to overturn the conviction and kept him on 
death row.

Recksiedler would later use her tough-on-an-accused-murderer ruling to try to 
score a judicial promotion before a group of political appointees.

But the Florida Supreme Court overturned the conviction, saying Recksiedler got 
it wrong. In a unanimous order, the court said the new evidence not only raised 
“reasonable doubt” about Aguirre-Jarquin’s guilt, but made him look like a 
“scapegoat.”

It might have ended there. But prosecutor Phil Archer wanted to try again.

The Seminole-Brevard state attorney said he didn’t believe the immigrant’s 
story about finding the dead bodies of his next-door neighbors and trying to 
help. He said Williams’ blood at the scene could be explained, since she lived 
with her mother and grandmother. And he didn’t believe her confessions, since 
she had a history of mental health issues — and an alibi that night.

But as Aguirre-Jarquin’s 2nd trial was slated to start last week, new evidence 
surfaced to cast doubt on Williams’ alibi. And on Monday afternoon, the state 
admitted it had no case and set Aguirre-Jarquin free.

There was no apology or admission of error. Archer simply said he didn’t see “a 
reasonable likelihood of success at trial.”

Recksiedler would not comment on the case.

But I’ll give you a few comments.

First of all, the system failed this man — and the two victims — most every 
step of the way.

Aguirre-Jarquin had only 2 saving graces — the Florida Supreme Court and the 
Innocence Project, which fought for him when nobody else would.

And know this: It was a long and costly fight — half a dozen lawyers working 
for years, donating more than $3 million worth of legal services.

(To learn more about the Innocence Project, visit InnocenceProject.org.)

Second, remember this case the next time you hear someone cavalierly say: These 
cases drag on too long. Just execute ’em already.

Many of Florida’s death-row inmates sat there for more than a decade before 
evidence surfaced to free them.

It can take time to get things right … especially when the state isn’t trying 
hard enough.

That’s what former Judge O.H. Eaton Jr. fears happened here. “This case is a 
perfect example of the police focusing on the target they think is guilty and 
ignoring other possibilities,” Eaton said last week.

Eaton knows this case better than most. He was the one who originally sentenced 
Aguirre-Jarquin to die.

Yes, in another remarkable development, a leading voice about the injustice was 
the judge who presided over his original trial.

Eaton, a respected former senior judge, says he has come to believe the death 
penalty is flawed.

For starters, capital punishment discriminates based on gender, geography and 
class. Men are more likely to be executed. So are people who live in Southern 
states or conservative regions. So are the poor. Said Eaton: “Those without the 
capital get the punishment.”

The system is also inherently biased since potential jurors who oppose the 
death penalty are often rejected.

Eaton doesn’t argue that anyone involved in this particular case knowingly 
tried to kill an innocent man. Neither do I. But the system is fatally flawed.

Theoretically, when someone is wrongly incarcerated in Florida, they’re 
entitled to $50,000 a year. But most people never get that compensation. And in 
Aguirre-Jarquin’s case, his reward may be deportation.

Some advocates say he should be granted asylum. I won’t argue his citizenship 
status. But I will argue the state should pay for its error.

If you’re having trouble sympathizing, try looking through another lens. 
Imagine if some other country locked up an American for 14 years for crimes he 
didn’t commit and then, when caught, simply sent the American back home without 
compensation or even an apology. You’d probably find that savage.

Well, trying to kill the wrong person is savage.

And it’s something Florida has tried to do 28 times … that we know of.

(source: Orlando Sentinel)







ALABAMA----new execution date

Execution set for Alabama inmate convicted of killing teen


Alabama has set an execution date for an inmate sentenced to death for the 1995 
fatal stabbing of a 15-year-old girl.

The Alabama Supreme Court set a Feb. 7 execution date for Dominique Ray.

Tiffany Harville disappeared from her Selma home on July 15, 1995. Her 
decomposing body was found in a field a month later.

Ray was convicted in 1999 after co-defendant Marcus Owden testified that Ray 
cut the girl's throat after they picked her up from her home and raped her. 
Owden said they also took the girl's purse which had $6 or $7 in it.

A judge sentenced Ray to die after jurors voted 11-1 to recommend that he 
receive the death penalty.

Months before his death penalty trial, Ray got a life sentence for the 1994 
slaying of two brothers, 13-year-old Reinhard Mabins and his 18-year-old 
brother, Ernest Mabins.

Newspaper reports from the time say another man had been initially charged in 
Harville's slaying, but those charges were dropped when Owden confessed to a 
role in all three killings. According to Owden's confession, the Mabins 
brothers were shot in February 1994 after they refused to join a gang organized 
by Owden and Ray.

Owden was sentenced to life in prison.

Lawyers for Ray unsuccessfully sought to overturn the death sentence, arguing 
Ray's defense lawyers were not told that Owden was suffering from schizophrenia 
at the time he implicated Ray and testified against him.

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2016 upheld the death sentence, 
rejecting defense claims that Ray's trial counsel had failed to present 
mitigating evidence regarding his traumatizing childhood, mental deficiencies 
and steroid abuse. The appellate court wrote that while it was "troubled by the 
paucity of counsel's mitigation investigation, our confidence in the outcome of 
the sentencing is not undermined."

Alabama last carried out an execution in April when 83-year-old Walter Leroy 
Moody was put to death for killing a federal judge with a mail bomb.


(source: Associated Press)





ARKANSAS:

Death penalty still on table


An Eagle Township resident accused of killing a homeless man under a bridge in 
rural Faulkner County earlier this year currently faces the death penalty.

Joe Bernard Nowell, 51, faces capital murder and abuse of a corpse charges 
following 60-year-old William Ray Holt’s brutal slaying.

Holt, a homeless man from Little Rock, was found dead under the East Fork 
Cadron Creek bridge along Highway 287 during the evening hours of July 24. A 
juvenile found Holt’s body, with his throat “slit on both sides and his abdomen 
splayed open” shortly before 8 a.m. on the night in question. Authorities 
believe the man was out in the water for about 24 hours before being located.

Last week, 20th Judicial District Prosecuting Attorney Luke Ferguson approved 
felony charges against the 50-year-old suspect, and on Friday, the capital 
murder suspect appeared in shackles before Circuit Judge Charles “Ed” Clawson 
Jr.

Wearing a black-and-white stripped jumpsuit and orange flip flops, Nowell 
looked up to attorney Lynn Plemmons as the public defender entered a not guilty 
plea on his behalf just after 11:20 a.m Friday.

“Given the nature of the charges,” a request by Deputy Prosecutor John Hout was 
made to keep Nowell behind bars without bail.

Clawson ultimately ruled in favor of the request just before Plemmons addressed 
the court regarding Nowell potentially facing the death penalty.

As of Friday, prosecutors had not taken the death option off the table. With 
the capital punishment on the table, it is likely that Nowell’s case will 
instead be represented by other attorneys from within the Arkansas Public 
Defender Commission.

“The state has not waived the death penalty at this time,” Hout confirmed 
before court officials.

Plemmons said that for the time being, he would continue representing Nowell.

However, while it “was [his] understanding [prosecutors] do intend to seek the 
death penalty,” Plemmons did not ask to toll speedy trial standards.

A 2-week trial in Nowell’s case is set to begin in mid-March.

The Faulkner County Sheriff’s Office pinpointed Nowell as the suspect killer 
after testing his DNA and comparing it to DNA extracted from a hand-rolled 
cigarette that was found at the crime scene. Prior to comparing the DNA 
samples, investigators learned Nowell picked up 60-year-old Holt in Little Rock 
and was having him panhandle money for him locally, according to an affidavit 
filed against Nowell.

Holt’s body was identified via a fingerprint scan at the Arkansas State Crime 
Lab on July 25. As the investigation continued, authorities learned the 
60-year-old homeless man had been living with Nowell at a residence on Berry 
Gap Lane in eastern Faulkner County.

The victim’s body was discovered on a Tuesday evening. Nowell reportedly told 
authorities he last saw the 60-year-old the Sunday prior to his discovery in 
the creek.

While speaking with Eiss at the hospital, investigators learned evidence was 
burned at Nowell’s residence on Berry Gap Lane in the Eagle Township, which is 
about 8 1/2 miles from where Holt’s body was found.

Nowell previously told authorities he last saw Holt on July 22. When he 
initially spoke with sheriff’s deputies, he said he was saved during the church 
service that night and he and Holt got into an argument over Holt’s “drinking 
problem.”

According to Nowell’s statement, Holt packed all his belongings, including $700 
and a red wallet, and left walking that night.

After speaking with others in the area, investigators learned Nowell and Holt 
had a close relationship.

“A neighbor of Mr. Nowell told investigators that Nowell put up a mail box for 
Mr. Holt, which we later found to be a requirement to get his Social Security 
benefits,” the affidavit reads in part. “In addition, we found that Mr. Nowell 
helped Holt open an Arvest Bank account in which Mr. Nowell was made power of 
attorney.”

FCSO also learned Nowell reportedly had a reputation for picking up homeless 
man and having them collect money for him.

Jessica Eiss, who is Nowell’s girlfriend, told police that Holt said he wanted 
to leave for Branson, Missouri, and that she and Nowell left to drop him off 
along Highway 65. However, she said the 3 never made it to Highway 65 before 
she and Nowell went back to Berry Gap Lane as Nowell attempted to destroy 
evidence linked to Holt’s death.

Holt, according to Eiss’ statement, wanted to go panhandle in Branson instead 
of collecting money for Nowell. As the 3 drove toward Highway 65 on the night 
in question, the pulled over by the East Fork Cadron Creek along Highway 287.

“Mr. Nowell and Mr. Holt then got out of the vehicle and walked down to the 
creek and sat on the bank,” Eiss recalled. “She stated that she had her phone 
and was looking down at her phone so she doesn’t know what happened but that 
Mr. Nowell came back and got in the vehicle along ... [and] was covered in 
blood. She stated that they went back to their residence and he rinsed the 
blood off of his arms using the water hose and then smashed her phone and 
burned the clothes he was wearing and her phone in a burn pile.”

Nowell is scheduled to appear next at 9 a.m. Jan. 10 in Faulkner County Circuit 
Court for a pretrial hearing. His jury trial is set for May 13-24.

(source: Log Cabin Democrat)






CALIFORNIA:

Decades after murders, 'Scorecard Killer' still on death row


The "Scorecard Killer" is one of the most prolific serial killers in U.S. 
history, tied to as many as 67 murders — most in California and about half a 
dozen in Oregon.

But Randy Kraft also paid a midweek visit to Grand Rapids.

35 years after his arrest, Kraft, now 73, is still on death row in
California.

A Water Tank and 2 Bodies

It's a steady climb up and around tree-lined curves heading west on Buth Drive 
NW from West River Drive, past century-old farm houses. In a clearing on the 
left, a massive water tank — stark, white — occupies the highest ground. Save 
for an occasional maintenance worker, Plainfield Township's water tank gets few 
visitors. And why would it?

But on Dec. 9, 1982, a frigid Thursday morning, a Consumers Power meter reader 
who was there just to do his job happened upon them on the frozen ground: the 
bodies of two men.

Both were face up. One was naked, the other shoeless and without a coat. They 
lay feet to feet at a right angle, frozen and partially drifted over with snow. 
The drag marks made it clear somebody had dumped them there.

"We had 2 bodies that were obviously molested, mutilated and unclothed and 
dead," recalled now-retired Kent County Sheriff's Department Detective Edward 
Rusticus, who helped investigate the murders.

Locals knew they were dealing with a monster unlike anything they had seen 
before.

"You wonder, what's going to happen? Is this the start of something? Or is it 
just an aberration?" then-Kent County Prosecutor David Sawyer said.

It wasn't long before authorities identified the bodies as 20-year-old Chris 
Schoenborn and his 24-year-old cousin Dennis Alt.

"They were hardworking farm boys, totally dedicated to the lifestyle that they 
had grown up in," Schoenborn's mom Carol Luneke said.

"It's something that you can only imagine might happen to somebody else," she 
continued. "Truly. These things don't happen to ordinary people like us."

Schoenborn lived and worked on the family's centennial farm on 20th Avenue in 
Wright Township, raising hogs and row after row of apple trees. A Grand Rapids 
West Catholic High School graduate, member of the prom court and a natural 
mechanic, as his mother called him, he was expected to help take over the farm 
one day.

Alt came from a well-known farm family in the Comstock Park area. A Kenowa 
Hills High School graduate, he was one 10 kids, worked on his uncle's farm and 
loved to hunt, fish and snowmobile.

"They were great families," Rusticus, the retired detective, said. "They were 
kind of from that Fruit Ridge area. They were church people, good people, 
raised good families."

"It was shocking," Kent County Medical Examiner Dr. Stephen Cohle, who 
performed the autopsies on Alt and Schoenborn, said. "These were two young men 
from prominent farming families known to be in good health, not known to have 
any bad habits or bad associates."

"How can you end up with two individuals, two young individuals, 20 and 24, 
good physical character, and there they are," Sawyer, the retired prosecutor, 
said. "They had had some mutilation and they obviously had been abused."

DEADLY COCKTAILS AT THE AMWAY GRAND

The cousins had last been seen alive two nights before their bodies were found 
at the annual horticulture convention at the Amway Grand Plaza in Grand Rapids. 
It was a big deal for fruit farmers: a chance to learn more about their trade 
and trade stories. It's where the Michigan Apple Queen was crowned.

They had drinks that night at Tootsie Van Kelly's, a popular hotel bar, but 
never made it home.

"That was not like him not to show up for chores in the morning and not to 
contact us, so in your heart, you know that something is very, very wrong," 
Schoenborn's mom said.

The Alts and Schoenborns had searched for their sons. Schoenborn's parents sat 
in the hotel lobby beneath a massive chandelier, hoping the two would walk by.

"You're looking for them, you know they're missing. Where are they? This is the 
last that we knew, they were down there," she said.

Cohle's autopsies raised more questions than they answered.

Schoenborn had been sexually mutilated with an Amway Grand Plaza pen.

But Cohle saw no obvious signs of how the young men died.

"There really was very little in the way of injury," he said. "Maybe a few 
scratches, but nothing traumatic, nothing that would have disabled either one 
of them, or even restrained either one of them. There were no ligature marks on 
the wrists or ankles.

"How they could have been at this convention at the Amway Grand and then nobody 
saw them leave?"

And how could anyone have overpowered the two men? Alt was 5-foot-6 and weighed 
130 pounds, but Schoenborn was 6-foot-1, weighed 200 pounds and wrestled in 
high school.

"So it was hard to conceive that he (Schoenborn) would against his will and 
without incident have left this convention and ended up dead. It was an 
incredible mystery," Cohle said.

Then came the toxicology test results. Both had alcohol in their systems and 
diazepam, more commonly known as Valium.

"It would make them very sleepy, and indeed it could make them pass out — the 
combination of alcohol and Valium," Cohle said.

The cocktail would have made it easy for a killer to choke them to death 
without resistance.

"They'd be either minimally conscious or unconscious and I think it would be 
pretty easy to suffocate them," Cohle said.

>From there, the investigation stalled.

"This one just occupied us so much because you sat there. We hadn't encountered 
something like this, such a serial killer," said Rusticus, the detective who 
helped on the case. "We didn't focus strongly in on a suspect. We had no 
suspect."

A BREAK ON A CALIFORNIA HIGHWAY

In May 1983, six months after the murders in Grand Rapids, there was a break 
more than 2,000 miles away on a highway in southern California.

California Highway Patrol pulled over then-38-year-old Randy Kraft for driving 
erratically on Interstate 5 in Mission Viejo. In the passenger seat of his 
Toyota Celica, they found a dying Marine — Kraft's last victim.

That led to more discoveries, notably a notebook in the trunk with cryptic 
handwritten notes on as many as 67 victims dating back to 1971. "Stable," the 
book read, "Marine Down, Skates, Parking Lot, Deodorant, Hollywood Bus, 
Portland Head."

At 67, Kraft had more victims than John Wayne Gacy, who buried some of his in 
the crawl space under his Chicago home, and Jeffrey Dahmer, who ate some of 
his.

Police said Kraft killed men only, sexually mutilating them. Many were found 
with Valium in their systems. Many were dumped near highways.

The Plainfield water tank is 2.5 miles from the US-131 West River Drive exit, a 
12-minute drive from the Amway.

RECORDED IN NOTEBOOK: "GR2"

California police sent out a nationwide alert looking for victims killed under 
similar circumstances.

"Does anyone have information regarding males strangled, diazepam, body parts 
mutilated, things of that nature?" Rusticus remembered the note.

It caught the attention of Kent County detectives.

"There were actually, believe it or not, about 11 things that they listed and 
10 of them were what happened to our victims," the former detective said.

And written in Kraft's notebook: "GR2." It came after "Portland Head."

"Obviously, those were our two killings here," Rusticus said.

Within 24 hours, he and another Kent County detective were flying to Los 
Angeles. They helped search Kraft's home in Long Beach. He was a collector. 
They found Schoenborn's Mighty Mac jacket, bottle opener, belt and boots.

In the lost and found at the Amway Grand Plaza, they found Alt's keys.

Soon, the Kent County detectives were sitting face-to-face in an Orange County 
interview room with Kraft, who has denied killing anybody. The detectives told 
Kraft where they were from and why they were there.

"He was, 'I've been in Grand Rapids, I know Grand Rapids, but I don't know what 
you're talking about,'" Rusticus said.

Kraft had visited Grand Rapids for a seminar for California-based Lear Siegler, 
where he worked as a computer programmer. He has been described as a genius. 
Records show he spent four days here, stayed in room 1169 at the Amway, rented 
a Buick Skylark on Dec. 5, 1982, and returned it Dec. 8, the day of the 
killings.

A co-worker later testified that he and Kraft had drinks with the cousins at 
the bar, that Schoenborn joked about being a "poor dirt farmer," according to 
published reports.

"He drinks with them, he becomes acquainted with them very quickly, and 
obviously if he has a liking for a person somehow slips a mickey into their 
drink," Rusticus said.

A Kent County Citizens Grand Jury indicted Kraft for the murders of Schoenborn 
and Alt. The former prosecutor said the case was strong.

"I think it's very rock solid," Sawyer said. "You've got witnesses who put him 
with these two young men at Tootsie Van Kelly's. You've got the evidence that's 
found in the rooms. You've got the scorecard that says 'GR2.'"

NEARLY 3 DECADES ON DEATH ROW

In 1989, after a California jury convicted Kraft of 16 murders in that state, 
Schoenborn's and Alt's moms testified at his death penalty hearing in Los 
Angeles.

As a devout Catholic, Schoenborn's mom struggled with the death penalty. She 
went to her priest for help.

"He said, ‘You will find in the Bible that says an eye for an eye and a tooth 
for a tooth,'" she said. "He quoted a couple of spots and he said, 'I feel 
that, yes, God is his judge, but he has taken lives. He doesn't deserve to 
live.'"

She remembers Kraft, 10 feet away from her as she approached the witness stand.

"He just stared at me, glanced at me. He was sitting there with a tweed jacket 
on that had patches on the elbows," she said. "He had a purple shirt on, he had 
a purple tie on and he was writing with a purple pen.

"When I got past him, I mean, I had cold chills being that close to him. He 
just looked at me like I was, who the heck are you?"

Soon, Kraft would learn that these were the moms of the GR2 and that they had 
names. They helped convince a jury to send Kraft to death row in November 1989.

That's where he is still, 73 years old, at San Quentin State Prison near San 
Francisco.

Kraft is one of more than 740 inmates on death row in California, by far more 
than any other state in the country. California hasn't executed anyone in more 
than a decade, despite a voter-approved proposition in 2016 to speed up the 
process.

Sawyer, the former prosecutor who is now on the Michigan Court of Appeals, only 
recently learned that Kraft is still alive.

"Went on the internet, there he is," Sawyer said. "If you're going to have a 
death penalty, you ought to carry it out. Either that, or don't have a death 
penalty."

He said he can't think of anyone who deserves it more.

"What I feel sorry for are the parents and the people who knew these two young 
men that have to go through this knowing there's not a final decision or 
something hasn't been done," Sawyer said.

Rusticus, the retired detective, said Kraft should have been executed years 
ago.

"Who's paying for all that? Citizens are paying for him to stay alive. I think 
the justice system didn't do their job completely," he said.

Schoenborn's mom gets updates on Kraft's federal court appeals every year from 
the attorney general's office in California. She keeps them stacked on a 
countertop in her kitchen. He filed the appeal in 2001 and it's still pending.

Today, though, she no longer wants the state to kill her son's killer.

"My feeling about it has totally changed. I feel now that this is the worst 
sentence for him is to be on death row," Schoenborn's mom said.

But she does wonder if a trial in Grand Rapids would have given her more 
answers.

"I guess from the aspect that maybe more would have come out of that, more from 
the investigation," she said.

She wants to know why Kraft chose her son and his cousin. And there’s another 
nagging, baffling question:

"How in the dickens did Mr. Kraft manage to haul them into the rental car and 
take them out to the water tower and dump them?" she said.

In Michigan, which has not had the death penalty since 1847, Kent County 
prosecutors dropped the murder charges against Kraft.

"It didn't seem worth it," Sawyer, the former prosecutor, said. "They 
(California) had a death penalty. We only had life, no parole."

INCOMPLETE FAMILY PHOTOS

Schoenborn's mom says she has since tried to learn more about Kraft and even 
bought a book about him.

"What is the mind of a serial killer like? What makes them do that they do?" 
she said.

He was, according to reports, a high school honors student, played tennis and 
spent a year in the U.S. Air Force. He also had two prior arrests, both for 
lewd conduct.

She remembers putting the book down, then picking it back up.

"I picked it up again, and it opened to the center, you know how the center 
part will open on a paperback? And that had photos in it, and that was the 
first time I saw a photo that we had not been privy to," she said.

It was a crime scene photograph of her son and his cousin.

"I can't tell you what kind of reaction I had," she said. "I know I fired the 
book across the room, and I never picked it up after that."

In the decades since the murders, the Schoenborn family has grown 
exponentially: in-laws, grandkids, great-grandkids. Schoenborn's mom pointed to 
one of the many family photographs on a wall near her front door.

"He should be in that picture," she said. "Probably him and that gal that he 
(would have) married. And maybe some grandkids."

Schoenborn's parents have divorced and the family has sold off most of the 
farm. Without their son, they lost interest.

"I think possibly, if he was still alive, that our family might still be 
operating that farm," she said.

If not, she said, for that monster.

(source: WISH TV news)