New ruling decides if family killer Steven McGilberry will have a chance at freedom
Stephen McGilberry was 16 years old when he killed his family with baseball bats, and his last chance at freedom ended Thursday with a new state Supreme Court ruling.
The high court on Thursday reversed a ruling by the Court of Appeals in January 2019 that the trial judge erred when he did not allow McGilberry to be resentenced by a jury.
Circuit Judge Robert Krebs had resentenced McGilberry to four consecutive terms of life without parole in April 2017.
A Jackson County jury originally convicted McGilberry and sentenced him to death in the 1994 baseball-beating deaths of his mother, Patricia “Pat” Purifoy, stepfather, Kenneth Purifoy, half-sister Kimberly Self, and Self’s 3-year-old son, Kristopher.
McGilberry committed the crimes, even recruiting a friend to help him carry out the murders, because his parents had grounded him and he was mad because he couldn’t use the family car, he told authorities.
McGilberry became eligible for resentencing in 2005 after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty for anyone under the age of 18 was unconstitutional. As a result, McGilberry was resentenced to four consecutive life sentences without parole.
In 2012, the Supreme Court decided anyone under 18 could not automatically be sentenced to life without parole. McGilberry went back to the trial court to argue that he should be entitled to a sentence of life with the possibility of parole and that a jury should decide his fate.
Instead, Krebs heard testimony at his resentencing and sent McGilberry back to prison for life without parole. In his ruling, Krebs said McGilberry had expressed no remorse for his crimes and had received 23 rule violations during his time in prison.
Relatives of the slain family attended McGilberry’s resentencing before Krebs and also pleaded with the judge to keep the man who devastated their family in prison for the rest of his life.
