SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) - Gov. Jerry Brown has again blocked parole for the killer of a developmentally disabled California man who was buried alive.
Brown said Friday that 55-year-old David Weidert remains too dangerous to be released. He overruled the recommendation by a state parole panel for the second time in three years.
Weidert, who was 17 at the time, was sentenced to life in prison for killing 20-year-old Fresno-area resident Michael Morganti in 1980 to cover up a $500 burglary Weidert had committed.
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Brown says he remains troubled by Weidert’s “truly heinous crime” and his inadequate explanation for causing “extraordinary suffering.”
Weidert and a 16-year-old accomplice forced Morganti to dig his own grave, beat him, stabbed him and choked him with a telephone wire. But he eventually suffocated after being buried alive.
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