Saying "I will be avenged," convicted Night Stalker Richard Ramirez railed against society and called on the "legions of the night (to) show no mercy," then heard a judge sentence him to die in the gas chamber for 13 murders.
"I am beyond your experience. I am beyond good and evil. I will be avenged. Lucifer dwells in us all," the self-proclaimed satanist said in a chilling statement at his sentencing Tuesday."I need not look beyond this room to see all the liars, the haters, the killers, the crooks, the paranoid cowards," Ramirez said. "I don't need to hear all of society's rationalizations. I've heard them before and the fact remains that what is, is. You don't understand me. You are not expected to. You are not capable of it."
After his brief statement, Ramirez, 29, a lanky drifter and petty thief from El Paso, Texas, was sentenced to die for murdering 13 people during a satanic-tinged rampage in 1984-85.
Before handing down the death sentence, Superior Court Judge Michael Tynan denied a motion to reduce the penalty to life in prison. Tynan also sentenced Ramirez to an additional 59 years and four months in prison for 30 other felonies.
The jury recommended the death sentence after they convicted Ramirez Sept. 20 following a 16-month trial. But it is not likely that Ramirez will be executed any time soon.
There are 265 condemned inmates in California, and no one has been executed in the state's gas chamber at San Quentin since 1967.