Darryl T. Kemp, a man twice sentenced to death and twice spared, passed away over the weekend at the age of 88 in a California prison hospital. He died of natural causes on Saturday at the California Medical Facility in Solano County, as confirmed by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
Kemp was among more than 600 inmates in California who were sentenced to death but now live out their lives in prison due to the state’s permanent halt on executions. Originally from Los Angeles, Kemp was convicted of the 1978 rape and murder of 40-year-old Armida Wiltsey at a reservoir in Contra Costa County. His conviction in 2009 marked his second death sentence for similar crimes.
In 1960, Kemp had been found guilty of raping and murdering Los Angeles nurse Marjorie Hipperson. He was initially sentenced to death but saw his sentence commuted to life in 1972 when the U.S. Supreme Court declared the death penalty unconstitutional. Kemp was eventually paroled in 1978 after serving his full sentence under the law. However, just weeks after his release, he killed Wiltsey at Lafayette Reservoir, where she was suffocated or strangled. Kemp remained free for over two years after the crime, fulfilling the terms of his parole.
Kemp’s connection to Wiltsey’s murder was not discovered until decades later through DNA evidence. At the time, Kemp was already serving a life sentence in Texas for multiple rapes. In 2009, during his trial for Wiltsey’s murder, his defense attorneys claimed Kemp had a mental illness that led to the accidental deaths of his victims. Despite these efforts, Kemp was sentenced to death once again, though the execution never took place.
Kemp’s death marks the end of his tumultuous and violent history. As of now, there are 611 inmates still on death row in California.
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