At least 20 inmates who have ties to the Long Beach area are awaiting execution on California’s death row. Some have been locked away for decades since being sentenced.
Now their fate could be in the hands of the California Supreme Court.
California’s capital punishment pipeline is notoriously slow and is beset by challenges from opponents who argue the delays make it unconstitutional. The state has only executed 13 people since 1978, and none have been put to death since 2006.
In November, California voters narrowly approved a ballot measure to speed up the lengthy appeals process.
But opponents quickly turned to the judicial system, arguing that measure, too, is unconstitutional.
If the court lets the ballot measure take effect, executions could resume in California.
The court heard arguments on the ballot measure Tuesday.
• Andre Burton
Age: 54
Crime: Burton was convicted for a 1983 murder during the course of a robbery in Long Beach.
Sentenced: June 4, 1985
• Anthony Cain
Age: 42
Crime: Cain was convicted of slashing to death his two elderly cousins in 2004. Lamar and Ernestine Matthews were both 75 at the time. Their bloodied bodies were found in their Cerritos home where they planned on spending their retirement.
Sentenced: Jan. 15, 2010
• Calvin Dion Chism
Age: 39
Crime: The Compton gang member was convicted of gunning down a clerk while he robbed a Long Beach liquor store in 1997. Richard Moon, the 53-year-old victim, was a grandfather from Bellflower.
Sentenced: Oct. 24, 2001
• James Dixon
Age: 44
Crime: Dixon was convicted of first-degree murder for the kidnapping and killing of Christina Burmeister, a 20-year-old Cerritos woman. Dixon and two co-conspirators took Burmeister to a Montclair bank and forced her to withdraw money before slashing her throat in Azusa Canyon.
Sentenced: May 2, 2008
• Marchand Elliott
Age: 49
Crime: Elliott was convicted of shooting a guard named Patrick Rooney who was walking to his armored car after making a cash pickup at a market on Lakewood Boulevard in Bellflower in 1988.
Sentenced: June 3, 1992
• Warren Hardy, Kevin Pearson and Jamelle Armstrong
Ages: 40, 47 and 37
Crime: The trio was convicted of raping, robbing, torturing and killing a 43-year-old mother three days after Christmas in 1998. The woman, Penny Keprta, was walking home at night near Wardlow Road and Long Beach Boulevard when the attackers pulled her down a freeway embankment where they sexually assaulted her with a wooden stake and hit her 114 times. The prosecutor who handled he case called the crime “one of the most vicious, cruel and horrific” that she had seen.
Sentenced: Jan. 23, 2003
• Earl Lloyd Jackson
Age: 59
Crime: Jurors convicted Jackson of murdering two elderly neighbors while he burglarized their Long Beach apartment in 1977. The victims, Vernita Curtis, 83, and Gladys Ott, 90, lived in the same four-plex as Jackson on East 16th Street.
Sentenced: March 29, 1979
• Kiongozi Jones
Age: 48
Crime: Jones was convicted of killing a rival gang member and a bystander during a 1996 shooting spree in downtown Long Beach. The rival, 19-year-old Mario Lopez, was smoking outside his apartment in the 1700 block of Pacific Avenue when Jones shot him. The bystander was a 35-year-old bicyclist named Angel Villa who was shot in the face as he rode by.
Sentenced: Nov. 17, 1998
• Randy Kraft
Age: 72
Crime: The so-called “Score Card Killer” and Long Beach native was convicted and sentenced to death in 1989 for strangling 16 hitchhikers, mostly from Orange County, after drugging and sexually assaulting them. His killing spree ended in 1983 when police pulled over his car in Mission Viejo and found a dead Marine in the passenger seat. Photographs of some of his victims and a handwritten, coded “death list” were also found in his car, suggesting he may have killed as many as 65.
Sentenced Nov. 29, 1989
• Darrel Lomax
Age: 46
Crime: Lomax, known as Malik Hasan, shot a store clerk, Nasser Akbar, 52, during a holdup at P&B Liquor Store on Seventh Street in August 1994. Even after the victim fell to the floor, Lomax leaned over the counter and fired multiple rounds into the victim’s body. He had previously been involved in a gruesome attempted murder in Oregon, where he lined up three people and shot them execution-style. All three survived.
Sentenced: Oct. 16, 1996
• Santiago Martinez Jr.
Age: 35
Crime: Martinez, a gang member, stabbed 28-year-old resident Christina Grace Wilkerson and left her body in a car near Orange Avenue and Anaheim Street in Long Beach. Prosecutors said he attacked her in a jealous rage despite only having known her for a few weeks. Martinez then murdered his girlfriend, stabbing and slashing her dozens of times, after she refused to help him hide Wilkerson’s body.
Sentenced: Nov. 30, 2009
• Bruce Millsap
Age: 51
Crime: Millsap, the ringleader of a Carson Crips gang, went on a killing spree that spanned three counties over two years.
He fatally shot eight people, seven of them during robberies. The eighth was a witness against him. Included in Millsap’s crimes was the 1995 killing of an armored truck guard named Fernando Herrera, who was shot to death in Queen City Bank, 4201 Long Beach Blvd. Other murders occurred in Lakewood, Bellflower, Los Angeles and Carson, among other cities.
Sentenced: Feb. 23, 2000
• Santiago Pineda
Age: 36
Crime: Pineda murdered a man in Long Beach in 2002 and then strangled a witness to the crime. In the first killing, Pineda pulled Rafael Sanchez from his car during a robbery and then used the car to run him over. Two years later, while in jail, Pineda managed to escape his cell and murder Raul Tinajero, a fellow inmate. Tinajero was serving time for auto theft at the time, but he’d witnessed the earlier murder and was set to testify against Pineda.
Sentenced: Feb. 21, 2007
• Ramon Sandoval Jr.
Age: 35
Crime: Sandoval, a Compton gang member, killed Long Beach police Officer Daryle Black on April 29, 2000. He and a friend were seeking retaliation for an earlier gang-related shooting when they came across two gang detectives in an unmarked car in the 1900 block of Lime Avenue. Using a 42-shot assault rifle, Sandoval opened fire on the officers. Officer Black was killed and his partner, Rick Delfin, was badly injured. Also struck was a pregnant woman in a nearby apartment; she survived. Black was the first Long Beach officer to die in the line of duty in 25 years.
Sentenced: May 9, 2003
• Paul Tuilaepa
Age: 51
Crime: Tuilaepa shot four men during a holdup at Long Beach’s Wander Inn Bar in October 1986, where a small crowd had gathered to watch Monday Night Football. Carrying a .22-caliber rifle, Tuilaepa (and another man) robbed the bartender, then turned to patrons for money. When a man named Melvin Whiddon refused the demand and knocked the gunman to the floor, Tuilaepa opened fire. He shot Whiddon and Whiddon’s brother, Kelvin, who was standing nearby. Then he turned his gun on patrons Bruce Monroe, who was shot in the stomach, and Kenneth Boone, who was shot in the neck. Whiddon died of his wounds; the others suffered serious injuries.
Sentenced: Sept. 25, 1987
• Andre Wilson
Age: 46
Crime: In July 1996, Wilson shot to death Sary San, a 38-year-old store clerk and mother of eight who was working her first shift at Seng Heng Market, 1734 E. Anaheim St. He pulled a gun, demanded money and then pushed San’s head to the counter before shooting her.
Sentenced: May 1, 1998
• Robert Wilson
Age: 65
Crime: Wilson was convicted of the 1984 murder of an Arizona tool salesman whose body was found inside a van in a Long Beach parking lot.
Sentenced: April 8, 1994
• Daniel Wozniak
Age: 33
Crime: Wozniak killed and beheaded an Army veteran and then murdered the man’s friend in a bizarre cover-up attempt that included Wozniak dumping pieces of the man’s body in a Long Beach park. The murders took place in Orange County where Wozniak shot Samuel Herr, 26, and stole his ATM card before killing Herr’s friend Juri “Julie” Kibuishi, 23, and staging her body to look like Herr had sexually assaulted her and then fled.
Sentenced: Sept. 23, 2016
