Arizona prisoner set to be executed apologizes, says he won’t seek clemency

This photo provided by the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry, shows death row prisoner Richard Kenneth Djerf. (Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry via AP)

PHOENIX — An Arizona prisoner scheduled to be executed next month for killing four members of a family in their Phoenix home over 30 years ago has issued a statement apologizing for the pain he’s caused.

In a handwritten note released Thursday, Richard Djerf reiterated he wasn’t going to seek relief from the state’s clemency board. “If I can’t find reason to spare my life, what reason would anyone else have?” he wrote. “I hope my death brings some measure of peace.”

The Arizona Attorney General’s Office, which sought the warrant for Djerf’s execution, declined to comment on the statement.

Djerf, 55, had pleaded guilty to four counts of murder in the killings of Albert Luna Sr., his wife Patricia and their 18-year-old daughter Rochelle and 5-year-old son Damien on Sept. 14, 1993. A judge later sentenced Djerf to death.

Djerf’s execution by lethal injection is scheduled for Oct. 17. It would be Arizona’s second use of the death penalty this year.

Prosecutors say Djerf blamed another Luna family member, Albert Luna Jr., for an earlier theft of home electronic items at his apartment, became obsessed with revenge and months later entered the home under a ruse in which he claimed to be delivering flowers.

Authorities say Djerf sexually assaulted Rochelle and slashed her throat; beat Albert Luna Sr. with an aluminum baseball bat before stabbing and shooting him; and tied Patricia Luna and Damien to kitchen chairs before fatally shooting them.

In his statement released Thursday, Djerf said Albert Jr. was an innocent victim who came home to discover what Djerf had done to his family. “No part of what I did to his family, or why, was ever his fault,” Djerf wrote.

The Associated Press was unable to find contact information for Luna through phone listings, examining case records and asking legal representatives involved in the court case.

Arizona, which currently has 108 prisoners on death row, last used the death penalty in mid-March when it executed Aaron Brian Gunches in the 2002 killing of Ted Price.

The state also carried out three executions in 2022 following a nearly eight-year hiatus brought on by criticism that a 2014 execution was botched and because of difficulties obtaining drugs for execution. In the 2014 execution, Joseph Wood was injected with 15 doses of a two-drug combination over two hours, leading him to snort repeatedly and gasp hundreds of times before he died.

Jacques Billeaud, The Associated Press