Federal Court Upholds Killer’s Death Sentence
A federal appeals court on Monday upheld the death sentence of a Stockton man who raped and killed a 17-year-old Lodi girl whose body was found beaten and stabbed in a nearby vineyard 22 years ago.
The case of Michael Morales, now 43, has pingponged through the court system for years. It could be a year or more before Morales is executed, if at all. Morales is expected to ask the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to reconsider the case.
Terri Winchel was severely beaten. Her skull, cheekbones and jaw were fractured. Prosecutors theorized that Morales killed the girl in January 1981 in a revenge attack for spreading rumors that his cousin was gay.
The California Supreme Court upheld Morales’ 1983 conviction, as did the federal courts. But in 1996, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the federal courts to entertain a variety of challenges to the conviction.
Morales challenged the finding that the murder was committed while torturing the victim -- the basis for the death sentence -- and an allegation that prosecutors concealed an agreement with a jailhouse informant to extract a confession from Morales.
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