I'm on this 'death watch.'
After 23 blows, Morales carried her, unconscious and dying, out of the car, dragged her to a vineyard, raped her and stabbed her four times.
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The words "cruel and unusual" should be well known to the man who raped and killed 17-year-old Terri Winchell on Jan. 8, 1981.
Morales choked Winchell with a leather belt. He used such force that the belt broke but failed to kill the young woman. Next, he took a hammer and pounded her skull 23 times, fracturing her jaw and cheek bones and shattering the base of her skull.
That still did not kill her, so he raped her and plunged a knife four times into her chest, leaving her to die in a Lodi vineyard.
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Death penalty opponents who gathered outside the prison in the cold Monday evening included retired Episcopal priest Lyle Grosjean of San Francisco, who had led a group of about 15 people on foot across the Golden Gate Bridge.
"We're against any gratuitous violence,'' said Grosjean, who has protested executions at San Quentin since 1959. "The death penalty doesn't have to happen.''
Ruth Enero of Modesto, who accompanied Grosjean, said it was her 12th execution-eve walk. "I know that executing Michael Morales does not do anything to resurrect Terri Winchell,'' she said.
This thing deserves a slow death.
When I worked at Superior Court here in San Diego I saw
plenty. Also the over 13 yrs. I was a Legal Support Asst.
with the County Attys I worked on homicide cases that made
me sick. Movies were made of a few of the cases.