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Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Arizona to execute Richard Djerf for 1993 quadruple murder of Phoenix family
Arizona has carried out most executions with lethal injection since 1992, but with a litany of changing protocols and problems, which ultimately halted executions in the state for eight years. Photo courtesy Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry Richard Kenneth Djerf, who murdered four members of a west Phoenix family in 1993, will be the next Death Row prisoner put to death in Arizona. The Arizona Attorney General's Office filed notice in the Arizona Supreme Court Thursday to begin the process for obtaining a death warrant. If all goes according to schedule, the execution should take place in late August or early September. 'The people of this state still support the death penalty, as far as we know,' Attorney General Kris Mayes told the Arizona Mirror. 'And so my job is to carry it out.' It's become a mantra of sorts for Mayes: Execution is the law of the land in Arizona. She said it in March after the execution of Aaron Gunches, the first of her administration, and she said it again several times during a recent interview with the Mirror. Usually, it's Republicans who embrace execution as a tenet of their law-and-order credo. Nonetheless, Mayes, a Democrat, has promised to carry out the law in her administration, though she won't give hints as to who will go after Djerf. There are 22 other men on Arizona Death Row who have exhausted their appeals, and Mayes intends to cull the worst of them. Djerf was hardly a surprise candidate. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX Defense attorneys had speculated for months that Djerf would be at the top of the list. And in late April, Maricopa County Attorney Rachell Mitchell blurted his name out at a press conference, even though executions fall outside of her jurisdiction. Consequently, journalists in the room rushed to figure out who Djerf was. While Mitchell was speculating, Mayes was analyzing. 'We have prepared a series of criteria by which I will be choosing the next people who are executed,' she said. The criteria 'includes things like blameworthiness, whether a child was killed, whether multiple people were killed, whether the crime was particularly heinous or cruel and the amount of time that the victims have been waiting. And I don't believe that's ever been done by any AG in the past. We did it.' In 1976, a U.S. Supreme Court opinion dictated that the death penalty be reserved for the worst of the worst crimes, defined by a set of aggravating factors. Arizona law follows the same theory, and Djerf's crimes fit the description: In September 1993, he took a family hostage in their home, killing the mother, father and a their 5-year-old son, and raping their teenage daughter before killing her, too. It was the work of a monster, or so it seemed. But it's never that simple. Djerf is now a 55-year-old man with a bald and bullet-shaped head and a leering smile. There's not a single item on his prison disciplinary record. According to one of his former defense attorneys, he sits in his cell drawing professional-quality, self-satirizing cartoons After a courthouse interview in December 1993, Bill Hermann my former colleague at The Arizona Republic, described the then-23-year-old Djerf as an enigma. 'Djerf appears to be a pleasant, retiring, gentle young man of medium height and stocky build, with wavy brown hair,' he wrote. 'He speaks softly and politely, and smiles often, in a friendly, if shy, manner.' It was a shocking portrait in light of what he had done. And though Djerf expressed his remorse in trial, it was too little, too late. Djerf had attended Independence High in Glendale. He was an unpopular kid, not anyone who drew attention. But he was not a complete stranger to police, having been arrested once for shoplifting and twice for extorting money from fellow students at the school. The Glendale apartment he rented after high school was decorated in nerd style, with auto racing posters, a Freddy Krueger doll and a street sign that said Elm St. Some time after high school, he took a job at a Safeway supermarket in west Phoenix, where he worked with Albert Luna Jr. But apparently they were not friends: Luna burglarized Djerf's apartment, taking electronic equipment and an AK-47. And though Djerf reported the theft to police, they did nothing. So, several months later, Djerf decided to get his own revenge. There were no surviving eyewitnesses to what happened next. But there is a detailed narrative in the court record, nonetheless, describing events down to the minute, presumably put together by prosecutors from his eventual confession and from what he told his girlfriend and other friends afterward. On the afternoon of Sept. 14, 1993, Djerf went to the 7200 block of West Monte Vista Road and knocked at the front door of the Luna house, brandishing a bouquet of artificial flowers. When Luna's mother, Patricia, 40, opened the door, Djerf pulled out a 9 mm handgun. He made her load belongings from the house into the family car and then taped her and her 5-year-old son, Damien, to kitchen chairs. He asked her where Albert Jr. was and taunted her by asking whether he should kill her or her son first, forcing the other to watch. Albert Jr.'s sister, Rochelle, 18, came home at 3 p.m. Djerf took her to her bedroom, taped her to the bed and raped her before stabbing her repeatedly and slitting her throat. He went back to the kitchen to let Patricia know he had killed her. An hour later, Albert Sr., 46, came home. Djerf forced him to crawl to another bedroom, and bashed his head with an aluminum baseball bat, leaving him for dead. Then he returned to the kitchen to tell Patricia. He tried to snap Damien's neck using a technique he'd seen in a movie, and when that didn't work, he tried to electrocute him with a frayed lamp cord. Albert Sr., who was not yet dead after all, leapt into the kitchen at that moment and stabbed Djerf with a pocket knife. The two men fought, but Djerf shot Albert Sr. to death. Then, after more taunts, he shot Patricia and Damien in the head, doused the room with gasoline, turned on the stove burners and left in the Luna family car to meet up with his girlfriend. The girlfriend drove Djerf to St. Joseph's Hospital; he said he'd been stabbed by two men who tied to rob him. But over the next few days, he told the girlfriend what he had done and bragged to other friends, as well. He was arrested on Sept. 18 and charged with burglary, multiple counts of kidnapping and aggravated assault, sexual assault, attempted arson, misconduct with weapons and four counts of murder. Djerf eventually confessed. Rather than face a jury, he pleaded guilty to all four murders and prosecutors agreed to drop the other charges. He fired his attorneys and represented himself through his sentencing, but after finding aggravators of pecuniary gain (murder for money), multiple murders, a victim younger than 15, and the heinous, cruel and depraved manner of the killings, the judge sentenced him to death four times. The last of his appeals failed in 2019. When Gov. Katie Hobbs took office in 2023, she declared a moratorium on executions, citing a litany of problems in carrying them out over the preceding decade. The prior attorney general, Mark Brnovich, had carried out three executions in the last months of his tenure, and he had obtained a warrant for a fourth. But Hobbs and Mayes let that warrant lapse as they awaited an analysis of the state's procedures for execution by lethal injection for which they commissioned a retired federal judge magistrate. 'A violent act in every case': One judge's impossible quest for a humane execution When that commissioner stated in a preliminary report that lethal injection, as practiced in Arizona, was fatally flawed, he was fired. His study was supplanted by a separate analysis conducted by Ryan Thornell, director of the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry. Meanwhile, Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell was pressuring the state to seek a new warrant for Death Row prisoner Aaron Gunches, whose earlier warrant had lapsed. She petitioned the Arizona Supreme Court to let her file for a warrant herself, and when the court agreed to hear her argument, Hobbs and Mayes decided to seek a warrant after all. 'We objected to what we thought was a very inappropriate filing by her in the Supreme Court,' Mayes said. 'We made it clear to the Supreme Court that this was the purview of the attorney general — whether it's me or whoever follows me. It is the purview of the attorney general to make these decisions. And it would be utter and complete chaos if we had 15 county attorneys who could go directly to the Supreme Court and file for a death warrant. That's insane, and it's not going to happen in the State of Arizona under my watch. Nor should any county attorney be lobbying the attorney general about who should go next. And, again, it's only been one county attorney.' But Mitchell stepped in again, positing during an April press conference that Djerf was a likely execution candidate. 'Rachel and I agree on a lot of things, but on this she was way off base,' Mayes said. 'I expressed that to her.' 'One of the reasons you don't do that is it very much violates the rights of the victims in these cases,' she said. Mayes had already made the decision to execute Djerf but was not ready to announce it. She had already informed the surviving victims of the Luna family, and she was relieved that they would not be hearing it from the media. 'In everything I do in regard to the death penalty, I try to be serious, not headline driven, and victim-focused,' she said. 'So, I think that is what disturbed me about that.' 'Hopefully, that won't happen again, but we'll see.' In the months before the Gunches execution, attorneys and activists filed motions to stop it, arguing that the state's supply of pentobarbital, the execution drug, had possibly expired. Others argued that the drug's use constituted cruel and unusual punishment because, in 84% of cases, according to experts, it causes flash pulmonary edema, a chemical reaction in the lungs that causes the decedent to literally drown in his own body fluids, while unresponsive, but not necessarily insensate. Experts have compared it to the painful and terrifying sensation of water-boarding torture. In fact, autopsies of nine Arizona death row prisoners executed since 2011 showed clear signs of pulmonary edema. The Gunches execution went forward anyway, without a hitch, and his autopsy showed that he was one of the 16% who do not experience pulmonary edema. 'I think it was the result of extensive preparations by Ryan Thornell, and the fact that the state took the amount of time that we needed to take to get it right,' Mayes said. 'And there are obviously differing opinions on the death penalty, but it is the law of Arizona — and I'm the attorney general, and it's my job to uphold the law of Arizona.' Mayes scoffed at the suggestion that there may have been some luck involved in the Gunches execution happening without issue. And so she and Thornell are going forward in Djerf's execution with the same protocol. As she explained: 'What I think about when I'm making these decisions is, No. 1: Can the state do this constitutionally and competently, and we can. No. 2: I'm the top law enforcement officer in the state and it's my job to uphold the law. And No. 3: I think about what the victims went through. And what the victims went through in every single one of these cases is far greater than what the perpetrator deals with in those final moments. And that is certainly the case in every single case that I have looked at in terms of those folks who are on death row. They put their victims through pure hell, and that needs to be front and center.' 'I try to put myself in the shoes of someone who has had a loved one murdered,' she said. 'It's unimaginable, and therefore it's important for us to consider how they're feeling and what they think closure is for them. And no one can make that decision for them. Nobody. Not you, as a reporter who's covered these cases, not me, as an AG who's doing her second execution. Nobody but the victim knows what it's like to walk that path. And it's a horrible, horrible path. And it goes on for a long time because these cases take decades to do. That's where I put my focus.' Is execution closure for victims? Can anyone get over the trauma of having a family extinguished? 'It's the end of a chapter in a book that goes on forever,' Mayes said. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
USA Today
22-05-2025
- Health
- USA Today
20 people, including an Arizona pastor, indicted in massive sober living home fraud case
20 people, including an Arizona pastor, indicted in massive sober living home fraud case Show Caption Hide Caption Medicaid cuts: Parents, Sens. Mark Kelly, Ruben Gallego share worries Sens. Mark Kelly and Ruben Gallego speak during a town hall about Medicaid cuts at the NOAH Cholla Health Center in Scottsdale on March 17, 2025. PHOENIX — The Arizona Attorney General's Office announced the indictment of 20 people, including a church pastor, accused of submitting false medical claims to the state's Medicaid program for more than $60 million in a little less than one year. The indictments were the latest in a string of cases alleging rampant fraud against the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System, most of which involved alcohol and drug rehabilitation services that were never rendered. Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes held a news conference in May 2023, a few months after taking office, to announce the widespread fraud, which she called a "stunning failure of government." The cost to taxpayers is as much as $2.5 billion. Since then, more than 100 individuals and companies have faced charges in 14 cases, the office told The Arizona Republic, part of the USA TODAY Network, in April. The scheme largely involved patients enrolled in the American Indian Health Plan, designed to serve Native Americans who may live in remote areas miles from doctors and clinics. It was intentionally crafted to have little oversight and scrutiny that might delay care. Authorities said fraudsters exploited those loopholes, flooding the system with fraudulent claims for hundreds of hours of rehabilitation services that were never provided. Patients, if they existed at all, were sometimes plied with alcohol and drugs to keep them living in care homes to keep the scheme going, authorities said. This latest case named 17 individuals and two entities, one of which is a church. The grand jury charged three others, but their identities were not released in the indictment. Most of the people named in the indictment had arraignments on May 20. Additional arraignments were scheduled for May 21 and May 27. Indictment: Fraudulent claims submitted were for dead, jailed people The indictment named two men as the ringleaders of the overarching conspiracy: Desire Rusingizwa and Fabrice Mvuyekure, along with a business the two started called Happy House Behavioral Health. The scheme began in August 2022 and lasted through January 2024, the indictment said. As part of that scheme, Rusingizwa and Mvuyekure submitted more than $60 million in fraudulent claims to AHCCCS through Happy House from August 2022 to July 2023, according to the indictment. AHCCCS suspended the business in July 2023, the agency's records show. Some of the fraudulent claims submitted by Happy House were for people who are dead, jailed, or in hospitals, according to the indictment. An attorney for Rusingizwa, Shaheen P. Torgoley, said in an email that Happy House provided legitimate rehabilitation services. "Mr. Rusingizwa is a pious family man with no criminal history," his attorney wrote. "He looks forward to defending against these allegations in court. The indictment also listed Theodore Mucuranyana, pastor of Hope of Life International Church. According to court records, Happy House started on land leased from the church. The indictment accused Mucuranyana, along with the church, of money laundering. According to the indictment, Happy House Behavioral Health transferred more than $5 million to the church after it received a letter from Arizona officials saying it was under investigation for fraud. Mucuranyana did not return a phone message seeking comment. His attorney, Joshua Kolsrud, emailed a statement that blamed the Attorney General's Office for failing to detect $60 million in payouts within a year. "Instead of addressing this regulatory failure, the prosecution pursues baseless charges against uninvolved parties to deflect blame," the statement said. Kolsrud said Macuranyana was a "respected community leader with no criminal history." Julia Kolsrud, an attorney for the church, said that the church merely served as a landlord and had no insight into the inner workings of its tenant. The Republic left phone messages and sent emails to attorneys listed for the defendants in the case. They did not immediately respond. The money fraudulently obtained from AHCCCS was used to pay the operators of so-called 'sober living homes' to house the patients, the indictment said. The other individuals named in the indictment were accused of conspiring with Happy House to get paid for providing the housing. By law, sober living homes were not designed to get paid from AHCCCS funds. The person living there was supposed to work and pay for the housing with that paycheck. $5 million check. Luxury jewelry. Handbags. The indictment listed 11 businesses that prosecutors said took part in the racketeering scheme, along with specific transactions that authorities said constituted money laundering. One was a July 2023 check for $2.8 million issued to Mvueykure, the indictment said. Another woman, who was listed in corporate records as one of the principals of Happy House, received a check for the same amount on that same day, the indictment said. That person was not listed in the indictment. Happy House wrote two checks to Hope of Life Church in summer 2023, one in June for $500,000 and another in July for $5 million, according to the indictment. In August 2023, more than $900,000 was transferred from the church to pay for a property. Hope of Life Church was listed as the buyer, according to documents filed in the Maricopa County Recorder's Office. Online real estate sites show the address listed in the indictment as matching a 5-acre vacant parcel described by a listing agent as the "perfect place to build your dream home." In December 2023, Hope of Life International Church wired $2 million to an unnamed entity in Rwanda, according to the indictment. A filing in a related case seeking to seize assets said investigators searched the homes of Mvuyekure and Rusingizwa, both located in Peoria, in June 2024. Among the items seized, court records show, were luxury jewelry, watches, and handbags. The grand jury charged the individuals and businesses on April 21, according to the indictment.
Yahoo
12-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Cochise County officials want to sue over colleagues' legal bills from 2022 election delay
The Cochise County Board of Supervisors wants to know if it can sue its insurance provider and former county attorney for damages after two supervisors were denied insurance coverage in an ongoing election interference case. The move by county officials centers on legal bills incurred by former Supervisor Peggy Judd and current Supervisor Tom Crosby, a pair of Republicans who voted in 2022 to delay the certification of the election. The delay came despite documentation supplied by the state election director showing the voting machines were certified, repeated legal advice from the county attorney that their actions were illegal, and a warning from the county's insurance provider that it would not cover legal bills stemming from the vote. They were quickly sued and eventually indicted by a grand jury for felony counts of conspiracy and interference with an election officer. Cochise County is among thirteen of Arizona's counties that have joined together to secure insurance through the Arizona Counties Insurance Pool. Though the pool is designed to cover some legal bills, Republican former Cochise County Attorney Bryan McIntyre said it only pays expenses related to civil litigation, not criminal actions brought against public officials. That meant Judd and Crosby were not covered by the Arizona Counties Insurance Pool and had to foot their own legal bills. Judd in October 2024 pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor as part of an agreement with the Arizona Attorney General's Office, which investigated and presented the case to a grand jury. Crosby currently faces felony counts of conspiracy and interference with an election officer. He petitioned the Arizona Supreme Court to review the case against him. Supervisor Frank Antenori, a Republican former state legislator who was elected to the board in 2024, said the new lawsuit came from concerns public officials would "go bankrupt because of a political difference with an attorney general." 'I don't want to be bankrupt and deny my kids their inheritance because I took a political stand on an issue,' he said. The Arizona Counties Insurance Pool and McIntyre did not respond to requests for comment. The current board of supervisors wants to make sure they don't foot the bill for future decisions they might make 'in good faith,' Antenori said during a special board meeting on Feb. 5. He said the insurance pool told him it would not cover the legal fees in the case against Judd and Crosby because the supervisors were going against the advice of the county attorney. Judd had her life was 'basically taken away from her,' Antenori said. He noted that she ultimately lost her house to pay for legal bills. He also said she had to move in with her mother and has very little to live on during her retirement. 'She thought she was doing what was best for her constituents,' he said. 'She heard from a lot of voters they wanted her to do a deep dive and look at what happened in that election before approving the canvas.' Supervisor Kathleen Gomez, a Republican who was elected to the board in 2024, said that had she been a sitting board at the time, she would not have certified it. 'I made a joke that no matter what I would probably end up going to jail for my constituents,' Gomez said. Gomez's statement echoed a similar statement Judd made two years prior when the board of supervisors was considering a full hand count of the ballots ahead of the 2022 election. Judd said during a board meeting she could go to jail for her vote after the county attorney told her and the other supervisors repeatedly that hand counting was unlawful. 'I'd like to take this chance. My heart and my work have been in it, and I don't want to back down. I might go to jail,' Judd said about the hand count proposal. Judd and Crosby ultimately voted to authorize a hand count audit of voting precincts. Trial court judges blocked the hand count, a decision that was affirmed by the state appeals court last year. The Arizona Counties Insurance Pool warned the supervisors at that time that it would not cover any legal costs resulting from the matter, noting it would be improper to expect other member counties in the insurance pool to pay Cochise County's attorney bills in the face of a lawsuit. During the board meeting on Feb. 5, Antenori requested the county hire outside counsel to investigate whether the board has a case against the insurance pool and McIntyre. He suggested hiring Rusing Lopez and Lazari, a firm with offices in Scottsdale and Tucson, who he said would be willing to look into whether they have a case. Antenori told Paul Correa, chief civil deputy county attorney, that the crux of the issue is that McIntyre's legal opinion was taken on by the attorney general and the insurance pool. 'I would like to remedy that, and I would like to set a precedent so if this occurs again, we have the ability to get multiple opinions, and that the attorney's one opinion ... isn't the one that is used to beat us over the head because we decided to go against your opinion and go with another opinion,' Antenori said. Correa said in the instance where board members disagree with the county attorney's advice and interpretation of a statute, finding a second opinion would be a valid practice and help when the insurance pool is deciding whether to insure board members. Gomez and Antenori voted to hire the firm of Rusing Lopez and Lizardi to provide them with legal counsel and determine if they have a claim against ACIP and McIntyre. Crosby left the room during the discussion and did not vote. Reach the reporter at The Republic's coverage of southern Arizona is funded, in part, with a grant from Report for America. Support Arizona news coverage with a tax-deductible donation at This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Cochise County officials want to sue over bills from election delay
