Davis Rejects Clemency for Serial Killer

Gov. Gray Davis on Friday refused to spare the life of convicted murderer Darrell Keith Rich, calling him a ruthless predator and saying that “there is absolutely nothing about Mr. Rich’s brutal behavior that warrants clemency.”

Rich, 45, is scheduled to die by lethal injection at San Quentin prison shortly after midnight March 15. He has spent nearly two decades on death row for sexually assaulting and murdering four women and girls in Shasta County during the summer of 1978.

Rich’s attorney, James M. Thomson, called Davis’ decision “morally and legally unsupportable.” Davis’ decision was not surprising. He had denied clemency to two other murderers who were executed earlier in his term, including Manuel Babbitt, a Vietnam veteran who attracted a large outpouring of sympathy because he said he committed his crime while having a wartime flashback.

In contrast, the only ones to plead for Rich’s life in recent months have been his attorneys and anti-death penalty activists.

Members of the victims’ families have implored the state to go ahead with the execution, complaining that Rich long ago should have been put to death for his murderous rampage.

Rich confessed to assaulting an 11-year-old girl and throwing her off a bridge, shooting a 28-year-old mother in the face, and using rocks to bludgeon two teenagers, including one whom he attacked as she walked to a fireworks display on the Fourth of July.

He argued during his three-month trial that he was insane at the time of his crime rampage, but was nonetheless convicted of the murders, along with the sexual assaults of five others.

In a second round of clemency papers sent to Davis on Friday morning, Rich’s attorneys argued that Rich’s death sentence should be commuted because his “remorse and positive adjustment in prison exclude him from the most irredeemable perpetrators.”

In his clemency decision, Davis graphically detailed Rich’s crimes and questioned the condemned man’s claims of remorse.