Jury Recommends Death Sentence In Double Murderer's Retrial
LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — A jury recommended Friday that a man be sentenced to death for murdering two L.A. women in cold blood 30 years ago.
Kevin Haley, 50, was found guilty of taking 56-year-old Laverne Stolzy's life. It also served as a retrial for the murder of 55-year-old Dolores Clement, with a jury in 1988 also recommending Haley get the death penalty for her death. Both women were killed at their L.A. homes in 1984.
Haley's conviction regarding Clement was upheld in 2004 by the California Supreme Court but they reversed the special circumstance allegations that legally underpinned his death sentence, prompting a retrial.
Jurors this time found true the special circumstance allegations that Clement was murdered during the commission of rape, sodomy, robbery and burglary.
Judge Kathleen Kennedy Friday ordered Haley to return to court July 29, where he will be formally sentenced.
Haley acted as his own attorney during his retrial and did not present any mitigating evidence or give a closing argument during the penalty phase of his trial, in which jurors rejected an option to recommend that he be sentenced to life behind bars without the possibility of parole.
Deputy District Attorney Iliana Alvarez, who handled the retrial with colleague Teresa De Castro, told jurors in her closing argument Thursday that Haley was a "monster," "predator" and "cold-blooded killer" who preyed on women.
Clement was strangled in her Miracle Mile apartment and left "half-naked" to die alone, according to prosecutors.
"She was robbed of her life for no reason other than his perverse and sadistic thirst for violence," Alvarez told jurors. "In his wake, he leaves devastation."
Stolzy was attacked at her South L.A. home with a two-by-four that left huge gashes in her skull, prosecutors say.
Investigators suspect Haley was involved in a series of other crimes in 1984, including murder, rape, attempted murder and a physical attack — all involving Southland women.
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