Darryl Kemp - Repeat Sex Offender - Gets Second Death Sentence

"Is that it?" he asked.

For the second time in his 73 years, Darryl Kemp was sentenced to death for committing rape and murder — this time for killing 40-year-old Armida Wiltsey at the Lafayette Reservoir in 1978.

Kemp, who was serving a life sentence in a Texas prison for multiple rapes in 2002 when DNA linked him to Wiltsey's long-unsolved slaying, first received the death penalty in 1960 for the rape and murder of Los Angeles nurse Marjorie Hipperson.

When capital punishment was deemed unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1970s, Kemp was paroled. He had been out of prison for four months when on Nov. 14, 1978, he attacked the Lafayette mother on a jogging path and killed her by either strangulation or suffocation.

Defense attorney David Headley argued Thursday that Kemp will more likely die of natural causes than execution, given the long delays surrounding California executions and Kemp's advanced age and poor health.

"Many millions are going to be spent to move along a process that has no chance in culmination," he said after numerous, unsuccessful attempts to convince Judge John Kennedy to commute Kemp's pending sentence to life in prison.

Headley and co-counsel Larry Barnes argued at trial that Kemp, a Los Angeles native with normal childhood, suffers from brain damage and a mental disorder that compels him to rape, and that the killings were the unintended consequences of Kemp's dangerous method of subduing his victims by cutting off their air supply.

A Contra Costa County jury in December convicted Kemp of first-degree murder and recommended death.

Just as he did at trial, Kemp sat motionless, hunched in his wheelchair with head down and eyes closed behind dark sunglasses during Thursday's three-hour hearing.

It was not until court was adjourned that Kemp showed he was conscious, raising his head and turning to his attorneys with open eyes.

"Is that it?" he asked.

"25% of all sex offenders re-offend within 15 years"
.........Sarah Tofte