A killer and rapist who begged for execution in the ‘60s, but was instead paroled in 1990, confessed to killing his 90-year-old mother last week and is back in jail.

Dennis Stanworth, 70, killed two women and raped at least four others during a Bay Area rampage in the mid-‘60s noted for its brutality. He got caught, pleaded guilty and begged for the death penalty. He got it in 1966, but it didn’t stick.

Three years later, the California Supreme Court turned a deaf ear to Stanworth’s pleas for execution and, following the lead of the U.S. Supreme Court, ruled his death penalty unconstitutional because the court had erroneously allowed the prosecution to exclude 12 prospective jurors who expressed opposition to the death penalty.

The court ordered a retrial and Stanworth was sentenced to death again in 1974. But he was among more than 100 prisoners, including Charles Manson and Sirhan Sirhan, who dodged death when the state high court declared in 1972 that capital punishment was cruel, unusual and unconstitutional. Stanworth’s sentence was commuted to life in prison, but at that time, the possibility of parole could not be excluded. (Life without the possibility of parole became an option in 1978.)

Hope springs eternal and Stanworth rediscovered his will to live. He cleaned up his act in prison and almost immediately started applying for parole. Stanworth was rejected four times before the State Parole Board granted him his first hearing in 1979, but it wasn’t until 1990 that he was freed from prison.

Stanworth wasn’t alone on the outside. Around 40% of the ’72 Death Row inmates were released on parole, according to research by the Contra Costa Times in 2003. Around 33% committed new crimes.  

Stanworth’s parole oversight ended in 1993, but he remained on the sex offender registry. Little was heard from him until last week when he contacted Vallejo police and admitted killing his mother about two months earlier.

Although no formal plea was entered in court, Stanworth declared from his wheelchair, “I plead guilty to everything.”

–Ken Broder

To Learn More:

Mom's Death Ends Former Death Row Inmate's Freedom (by Paul Elias, Associated Press)

Ex-Death Row Con’s Sobbing Admission (by Demian Bulwa, San Francisco Chronicle)

Dennis Stanworth One of 107 Death Row Inmates Spared by Supreme Court (by Matthias Gafni, Contra Costa Times)

Dennis Stanworth: A History of Crime (San Jose Mercury News)