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A man who was twice sentenced to death and twice avoided that fate died in a prison hospital over the weekend.
Darryl T. Kemp, 88, died Saturday of natural causes at the California Medical Facility in Solano County, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
Kemp was one of more than 600 inmates sentenced to death under California’s penal code, but he will live out his entire life after the state permanently suspended prison executions.
This prison photo published by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation on March 23, 2018, shows convicted murderer Darryl T. Kemp.
Kemp, a Los Angeles native, was convicted of first-degree murder in 2009 for raping and killing 40-year-old Armida Wiltsey at a Contra Costa County reservoir in 1978.
It was Kemp’s second time being sentenced to death after being convicted of rape and murder.
In 1960, he was convicted of murdering and raping Los Angeles nurse Marjorie Hipperson. After that trial, he was sentenced to death and awaited execution for the next 10 years.
However, in 1972, the US Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty was unconstitutional, and his sentence was subsequently changed to life imprisonment with the possibility of parole.
In July 1978, he was released on parole after serving his entire sentence “as prescribed by law.”
A few weeks later, he went on to kill Wiltsey at Lafayette Reservoir, and Wiltsey died from strangulation or suffocation. Just over two years later, he fulfilled the terms of his parole and was released.
Decades later, he was linked to the long-unsolved Wiltsey family murders through DNA technology.
During his 2009 trial, Kemp’s defense attorneys argued that to avoid the death penalty, Kemp was mentally ill and had no choice but to commit the rape, and that the killing was an accidental result of a sexual assault that restricted the victim’s airflow. He claimed that it was. To the East Bay Times report.
The gamble did not pay off, and despite his advanced age, the jury recommended that he be executed, a sentence that was never carried out again.
There are currently 611 inmates remaining on death row in California. For more information about the state’s death penalty, click here.
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