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Man Sentenced To Death A 2nd Time In 1984 Murders Of 2 Women

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — A man was sentenced Wednesday to death for killing two women in Los Angeles three decades ago, as the judge made note of the brutality of the crimes.

Kevin Haley, 50, was sentenced to death in the killings of Laverne Stolzy on June 25, 1984 and Dolores Clement on Sept. 27, 1984.

Judge Kathleen Kennedy denied a defense motion to reduce a jury's death penalty recommendation to life in prison without the possibility of parole, calling the brutality of Haley's crimes "horrendous" and saying he terrorized women who were "essentially helpless."

Beth Stolzy said she waited 30 years for justice for her mother.

"I want this man to have an execution date," she said. "Please figure out how to carry out this sentence."

Stolzy, who had turned 56 a week before she was killed in her South Los Angeles home, was hit so hard with a two-by-four that huge gashes were left in her head, according to prosecutors.

Beth Stolzy walked out of court after Haley responded, "I didn't rape her. I didn't sodomize her. I didn't orally copulate her…I don't believe that I should be charged with something that isn't true."

The judge told Haley he received every aspect of due process any defendant could have possibly received, including two trials in which 24 jurors concluded he should be sentenced to death.

"DNA conclusively confirmed that you were, in fact, the attacker of Ms. Stolzy," Kennedy told the defendant. "Nobody planted your DNA."

Clement, 55, was strangled in her apartment in the Miracle Mile area of Los Angeles while getting ready for bed and left "half-naked" to die alone, according to the prosecutor.

Haley was originally sentenced to death in 1988 for Clement's killing. A retrial was triggered after an August 2004 California Supreme Court ruling that upheld his conviction for Clement's killing, but reversed the special circumstance allegations that legally underpinned his death sentence.

The second jury to hear the case against him convicted Haley on May 8 of first-degree murder for Stolzy's killing -- a charge on which the first jury had deadlocked -- and found true the special circumstance allegations that she was murdered during the commission of a rape or attempted rape, burglary and robbery.

Two other special circumstance allegations -- murder during the commission of sodomy and murder during the commission of oral copulation -- were dismissed after jurors deadlocked on those.

Jurors in Haley's second trial also found true the special circumstance allegations that Clement was murdered during the commission of a rape, sodomy, robbery and burglary.

Haley acted as his own attorney during his retrial and did not present any mitigating evidence or give a closing argument during the penalty phase of his trial, in which jurors rejected an option to recommend that he be sentenced to life behind bars without the possibility of parole.

(©2014 CBS Local Media, a division of CBS Radio Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Wire services contributed to this report.)

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