LOS ANGELES - California Gov. Jerry Brown faces a Friday deadline to decide whether to block the parole of a convicted murderer who beat and buried alive a mentally disabled man three decades ago, state officials said.
David Weidert , 52, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the 1980 murder of Fresno -area resident Michael Morganti , 20.
A California parole board in January ruled that Weidert was no longer dangerous, leaving the possibility of his parole from the state's overcrowded prison system up to Brown.
Brown, whose office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the issue, has a midnight deadline to decide whether to prevent Weidert from being paroled from the Correctional Training Facility in Soledad.
Weidert was convicted of beating and stabbing Morganti, who was forced to dig his own grave, and then burying the young man alive, leaving him to suffocate to death.
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Prosecutors said Weidert feared the developmentally disabled Morganti would testify against him about his involvement in the burglary of a doctor's office, according to court documents. Morganti was used as a lookout while he committed the crime, according to court records.
Lisa Smittcamp , the Fresno County District Attorney, and the victim's family have urged the governor to keep Weidert in prison, saying the crime was especially heinous.
"His life sentence remains relevant today - 35 years later -because he still can not begin to explain why he took Mike's life, and why he did so in a depraved and indifferent manner," she said in a statement this week.
Morganti's family have urged people to call or write Brown and demand Weidert remain behind bars.
"It should go back to that decision (life in prison) that he should never be released from prison," Kathryn Groves , Morganti's mother, told Central Valley news.
