11:47 AM Wed, Oct 01, 2008 http://crimeblog.dallasnews.com/
Disturbing death penalty case–disturbing on many fronts–out of California. Darryl Kemp, 72, is on trial for a 1978 rape and murder. According to the Contra Costa Times, Mr. Kemp, who was connected to the cold case through DNA, is on trial, while serving a life sentence in Texas for a 1983 rape in Austin. According to clips from other papers, Mr. Kemp assaulted a half dozen women that year.
Horrific as that is, what’s even worse is that Mr. Kemp is a death row alum.
He was convicted and sentenced to death in California in 1960 for the rape and murder of a woman in 1957 and the rape of another woman in 1959. That sentence was commuted to life after the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed the death penalty in 1972; he was paroled six years later.
According to Texas records, Mr. Kemp also was convicted of theft in Tarrant County in 1980, receiving five years in prison. His parole on that charge was revoked after the rape conviction in Austin. Studies show most death row inmates released after the Supreme Court decision stayed out of prison. But Mr. Kemp, and Texas’ own Kenneth McDuff, who killed again, are the ones everyone will remember.
According to the book “Back From the Dead” by attorney Joan Cheever, of the 589 death row inmates affected by the Furman decision, 322 were eventually released from prison; of those about a third returned to prison.
In 2003, The Contra Costa Times, also took a look at former death row inmates from California; of the 42 released in 1972, the recidivism rate was 29 percent.
Finally in 2005, The Dallas Morning News looked at the “Furman 47,” the Texas inmates whose sentences were commuted in 1972. Of those 47, 22 re-offended, with about two-thirds of those committing major felonies.