Inmate at Vaughn Correctional Center dies

By Xerxes Wilson
The News Journal

A convicted murderer serving a life sentence at Vaughn Correctional Center near Smyrna died Sunday.

Sadiki Garden, 40 of New Castle, died of natural causes at Christiana Hospital after an illness, according to Jason Miller, spokesman for the Delaware Department of Correction.

Delaware State Police are conducting an investigation, though foul play is not suspected, Miller said. Garden’s body was turned over to the State Division of Forensic Science.

Garden was serving a life sentence for the December 1999 murder of Denise Rhudy, a 36-year-old mother of four who lived in Newark. Garden shot Rhudy once through the chest and once through the shoulder and neck in a botched robbery in a Wilmington Parking Authority-owned lot outside the now-closed Bottlecaps Bar & Restaurant on the 200 block of West 9th Street in downtown Wilmington.

A jury voted 10-2 that Garden should serve a life sentence for the slaying, but Judge John E. Babiarz Jr. imposed a death penalty. The Delaware Supreme Court overruled the sentence sending the case back to Babiarz with instruction to give the jury recommendation greater weight.

However, Babiarz again imposed a death sentence and the Supreme Court in 2004 sent back the case with instructions that all but ordered Babiarz to impose a life sentence. Later on, the Delaware General Assembly clarified state law to note a judge is not bound by the jury’s recommendation, but the judge had to give the jury recommendation “appropriate weight.”

http://www.delawareonline.com/story/...dies/72997080/