Two prisoners who murdered four inmates to get death penalty and avoid life in jail handed more life sentences
SOUTH CAROLINA: Two inmates, who murdered four inmates with the hope of receiving death penalties instead of the life sentences they were serving, had their plan backfire.
Denver Simmons, 38, and Jacob Philip, 28, were already serving for unrelated double murders. As a result of their killing spree in prison, the pair received additional life sentences after the victims' families objected to them being executed. The families of victims — William Scruggs, 44, Jimmy Ham, 56, Jason Kelley, 35, and John King, 52 —requested prosecutors not to seek the death penalty.
As reported by The State, Deputy 5th Circuit Solicitor Dan Goldberg shared, "The four families were unanimous in that they did not want to pursue it". Both the men had initially been convicted in double murders earlier. Each had murdered a woman and a child in separate incidents and were already serving two life sentences. After pleading guilty to the recent murders, they now have six life sentences.
The families of the four victims were aware of the fact that Simmons and Philips' motive to kill the inmates was to get the death penalty as they did not want to spend the years in prison and then die there. Goldberg shared, "The families would rather they be in prison than give them what they wanted".
The murders of the prison inmates took place in 2017 at the Kirkland Correctional Institution. During a series of phone calls over that year, Simmons recalled the brutal way that he and Philips lured their victims into a prison cell on the pretext of giving them some coffee and cookies. They personally had nothing against the men they killed. Simmons had admitted that one of them was a friend.
Simmons shared referring to Philip, "I'd always joke with him - from back in August and September and October of 2015 - that if we weren't going to kill ourselves, that we could make a name for ourselves, so to speak, and get the death penalty. At the end of March of this year (2017), he was willing to do it. So, we just planned to do it. And we did it".
"They get the first guy to come in there — they attack him, they strangle him until he’s done — and then they put him under the bed in the cell. A short time later, they are out and about, and they get another guy to come in the cell, and when he walks in, the same thing. And they put him on top of the bed. They do that four times," Goldberg revealed.