Serial Murderer’s Appeal Reaches CA Supreme Court

Thirteen years after his conviction for strangling 10 women to death, the California Supreme Court will finally hear the direct appeal of Los Angeles serial killer Chester Turner.  City News Service reports that while Turner’s appeal will focus on his 2007 conviction and death sentence for the murders of ten women between the ages of 21 and 45 between 1987 and 1998,  in 2014 he was also convicted of the murders of four additional women over the same period.  DNA evidence linked Turner to the killings.

Turner’s DNA was in the state’s database after he was convicted of raping a woman in Los Angeles in 2002.  There was no question regarding Turner’s guilt for any of these crimes.  The reason that it took 13 years for his direct appeal to reach the California Supreme Court is because he was convicted and sentenced before state voters adopted Proposition 66, in 2016.  That measure streamlined the appeals process for new death penalty cases.   If his conviction and death sentence are upheld, Turner, 53, will not face execution anytime soon due to Governor Gavin Newsom’s blanket reprieve of condemned murderers because of his concern some might not be guilty.  Tough luck for the families of the 14 women that Turner brutally killed.