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Thread: Stephen Virgil McGilberry - Mississippi

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    Stephen Virgil McGilberry - Mississippi





    Summary of Offense:

    In October 1994, at the age of 16, McGilberry murdered his mother, stepfather, half-sister and her three-year-old son with a baseball bat. His death sentence was eventually commuted to life imprisonment due to the US Supreme Court's Roper v. Simmons decision (2005) banning the imposition of capital punishment on murderers younger than 18 years old.

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    April 15, 2005

    Man Who Found Victims Says McGilberry Belongs On Death Row

    Tommy Pietrangelo can still vividly remember the night ten years ago when he found the bodies of his fiance and her family in their St. Martin home.

    "I was looking all around the house for Chris and noticed he was laying on the couch. I say, oh please God, please God, no. Let him be sleeping or something."

    The three-year-old was the last body Pietrangelo found as he rushed through the St. Martin home in October of 1994.

    Pietrangelo was engaged to the baby's mother, 24-year-old Kim Self, and had gone to her home to check on her.

    The gruesome murder scene he found when he got there still haunts him today.

    "It's there, everyday. It's there everyday, everywhere I look, everywhere I go. It's always with me. I just feel like I got sentenced for the rest of my life."

    With the Supreme Court's recent ruling against any juvenile death sentence, Pietrangelo feels he's the only one suffering now.

    He says life in prison for Stephen McGilberry is no punishment at all.

    "Going to jail didn't bother him. It was like he was going out to hang with his buddies. The state comes and takes the death penalty off of him, so now he ain't got nothing to sweat."

    Pietrangelo says McGilberry was tried as an adult and given the death penalty because of the brutality of the crime. He beat his family to death with a baseball bat.

    "It's not like he went in there and shot everybody in the head and killed them. These people suffered. These people were tortured before they were killed.

    "I'd like to get it reversed."

    Pietrangelo hopes at some point the courts will take a special look at the McGilberry case and give the convicted murderer the sentence he deserves.

    http://www.wlox.com/story/3216940/ma...s-on-death-row

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    Jackson County man convicted in quadruple murders as a teen to face resentencing again

    The capital murder case of Steven McGilberry, convicted in the October 1994 baseball bat beating deaths of his mother, stepfather, stepsister, and her 3-year-old son, is headed back to a Jackson County courtroom for resentencing.

    The Mississippi Supreme Court sent the case back to Jackson County Circuit Court for reconsideration of McGilberry's current sentence of life without parole on four counts of capital murder.

    The high court issued the ruling after McGilberry, now 37, filed his own motion to vacate his sentence based on a 2012 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that says a mandate to automatically sentence a juvenile to life without parole for a homicide violates the Eight Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.

    The high court says certain factors, including the age of the suspect at the time of the killing and the nature of the crime, should be considered before imposing a sentence of life without parole for minors.

    A motion hearing on the matter is scheduled Friday. At issue then is whether a judge or jury will resentence McGilberry. Special Prosecutor, Larry Baker, an assistant U.S. Attorney, wants a judge to impose the sentence, but McGilberry wants a jury to resentence him.

    In McGilberry's motion, he's also asking for his release after serving 20 years, 10 of them on death row.

    When a jury convicted McGilberry, they sentenced him to death, but he was resentenced for the first time in 2005 to four consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole. He escaped the death penalty because of another U.S. Supreme Court ruling that made it unconstitutional to execute someone who committed a capital offense while they were under the age of 18.

    At the first resentencing hearing, affidavits of McGilberry's troubled past, including abuse and alcoholism within his family, were considered. The same information has been included in the latest filing.

    At the age of 16, McGilberry recruited a friend to help him kill his family while they slept at their home in the St. Martin community. Bludgeoned to death were McGilberry's mother, Patricia Purifoy, 45; his stepfather, Army National Guard Technical Sgt. Kenneth Purifoy, 44; stepsister, Kimberly Self, 24, and her son, Kristopher, 3.

    In his motion asking for his release, McGilberry paints himself as a young boy who came of age "in the shadow of what the Mississippi writer, John Grisham, called, 'The Chamber,' referring to the state penitentiary's Unit 32 that housed death row inmates and was shut down after the ACLU filed a lawsuit citing inhumane conditions.

    "That was the home for a boy," McGilberry wrote, "seven days removed from his 18th birthday."

    That same "boy" had to be restrained and have a surgical mask placed over his mouth before going to court years earlier because he was spitting on deputies.

    McGilberry says he cried about killing his family for the first time after he was sentenced to death.

    He shed his tears in the arms of a family friend who supported him after he was convicted. She asked the jury to spare McGilberry's life, though they sentenced him to death.

    He cried, he said, "not for himself, but because of the reality of what he caused to everyone who ever loved him in his life."

    He said in the filing he could never "allow himself to cause that level of hurt again."

    "The lessons of grief and remorse had come to bloom inside of McGilberry," he wrote, noting his periods of depression and denial. "The more ..(he) kept thinking about the crime -- about his mom, Kristopher, Kim, and Ken, he couldn't believe that he did that."

    McGilberry claims he's changed since the killing.

    He says he earned his GED, obtained credentials as an ordained minister, completed alcohol and drug treatment, worked in different areas of different prisons without causing problems and married a friend who went to school with him in St. Martin prior to the mass killings.

    McGilberry also noted how he has never spoken since his videotaped confession in 1994 "not to explain, to ask for mercy or for attention."

    "McGilberry's guilt is rooted in his crime, and his crime is so personal, words do an injustice in his mind," he wrote. "He would also opinion that he deserved to die. Who would want to live knowing not only you could commit murder on innocent people but on your own family. There is no escaping the grief endured when you life is so wedded to death."

    The remaining members of McGilberry's family never spoke to him again.

    McGilberry said he's pleading for at least a chance at parole.

    http://www.sunherald.com/2015/07/16/...#storylink=cpy
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    Resentencing set for man in family’s 1994 beating death

    Resentencing has been scheduled for a Jackson County man in the 1994 beating deaths of four family members.

    The Sun Herald reports Stephen Virgil McGilberry is scheduled for resentencing Nov. 14. He was in Jackson County Circuit Court on Thursday.

    The 37-year-old McGilberry was 16 when he killed his mother, stepfather, sister and her 3-year-old son with a baseball bat.

    In 1996, a Jackson County jury convicted him and sentenced him to death, but a U.S. Supreme Court barred the death penalty for juveniles. In 2005, McGilberry was re-sentenced to four consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole.

    He won a third chance at sentencing after a 2012 U.S. Supreme Court ruling found that automatic life sentences for juveniles violate the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.

    http://www.wbbjtv.com/2016/01/22/res...beating-death/
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    Senior Member CnCP Legend CharlesMartel's Avatar
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    He beat to death 4 Coast family members at age 16. Now he’s won a new sentencing.

    By Anita Lee
    The Sun Herald

    He killed his family with baseball bats when he was 16 years old, but as he approaches 40, the prison sentence of Stephen Virgil McGilberry remains unresolved.

    The Mississippi Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday that a jury should resentence McGilberry. Circuit Court Judge Robert Krebs had resentenced McGilberry in April 2017 to life without parole.

    A return to Circuit Court would result in McGilberry’s fourth sentencing.

    A Jackson County jury originally sentenced McGilberry to death for the 1994 murders of his mother, Patricia “Pat” Purifoy, stepfather Kenneth Purifoy, half-sister Kimberly Self and her 3-year-old son Kristopher. He was mad because he had been grounded and was not allowed to use the family car, he said.

    After the U.S. Supreme Court in 2005 found the death penalty unconstitutional for those under 18, McGilberry was resentenced to four consecutive life terms without parole.

    In 2012, the Supreme Court decided anyone under 18 could not be automatically sentenced to life without parole. McGilberry was back in court in 2017, arguing that a new sentence should offer him the possibility of parole and a jury should decide the sentence.

    Krebs instead resentenced McGilberry to life without parole, finding he had expressed no remorse for the brutal murders and had chalked up 23 rules violations in prison. The appellate court said Krebs erred in doing so because a jury has sole authority to sentence McGilberry in the capital murder case.

    https://www.sunherald.com/news/local...224594350.html
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    Stephen McGilberry to serve four life sentences without parole for 1994 murders

    By WLOS News Staff

    JACKSON COUNTY, Miss. (WLOX) - More than 25 years after the initial crime, a Jackson County man will spend the rest of his life behind bars after a decision by the Mississippi Supreme Court.

    The court upheld Stephen McGilberry’s sentence to four life sentences without parole for a 1994 crime.

    Stephen McGilberry, now 41, was originally sentenced to death in 1996 for the murder of four family members, including McGilberry’s three-year-old nephew two years prior.

    However, in 2005, the United States Supreme Court invalidated the death penalty for offenders who committed their capital crimes before reaching the age of 18. McGilberry was 16 at the time of his crimes, so his death sentence was vacated.

    McGilberry was then sentenced to four life terms without parole. In a 2012 decision, the U.S. Supreme court held that the mandatory imposition of life without parole for crimes committed before the offender turned 18 violated the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.

    McGilberry filed two motions to appeal the sentence in 2016, but the court ultimately upheld the initial decision meaning McGilberry will serve four consecutive life sentences without parole.

    McGilberry was found guilty for killing his mother, stepfather, half-sister and nephew with a baseball bat. Court documents show McGilberry had premeditated the incident, including placing the weapon outside his bedroom window so he could walk into his house without the baseball bat so as not to arouse suspicion.

    https://www.wlbt.com/2020/01/23/step...arole-murders/
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