An Arizona death row prisoner convicted of killing four members of a Phoenix family more than 30 years ago is scheduled to be executed next month and says he will not seek clemency.
Richard Djerf, 55, released a handwritten statement Thursday expressing remorse for the 1993 murders of Albert and Patricia Luna, their teenage daughter Rochelle, and 5-year-old son Damien.
“If I can’t find reason to spare my life, what reason would anyone else have?” Djerf wrote. “I hope my death brings some measure of peace.”
Djerf pleaded guilty to four counts of murder and was sentenced to death after prosecutors said he carried out the killings in a revenge plot against another Luna family member. According to court records, Djerf lured his way into the family’s home under the guise of delivering flowers, then sexually assaulted and killed Rochelle, beat and stabbed Albert Sr., and tied Patricia and Damien to chairs before fatally shooting them.
He is scheduled to die by lethal injection on Oct. 17, which would mark Arizona’s second execution this year.
The case has long been cited as one of the state’s most brutal family homicides. Prosecutors said Djerf blamed Albert Luna Jr. for an earlier theft of electronics from his apartment, but in his final statement Djerf acknowledged Albert Jr. was “an innocent victim who came home to discover what I had done.”
Arizona currently has 108 inmates on death row. The state resumed executions in 2022 after an eight-year pause that followed controversy over the botched 2014 execution of Joseph Wood, during which the condemned man gasped and snorted hundreds of times before dying.
The Arizona Attorney General’s Office, which sought the execution warrant, declined to comment on Djerf’s statement.
