The State - News from Jan. 16, 1987

Almost 25 years after the crime, a man convicted twice of stabbing a teen-age girl to death with her own scissors was sentenced to life in prison. Booker T. Hillery was found guilty again last month of stabbing Marlene Miller, 15, in the throat at her rural Hanford home on March 21, 1962. Now 55, Hillery was sentenced twice to die in the gas chamber after his original conviction, but those rulings were nullified. “If I had been the judge in the first trial, when he imposed the death penalty, I would have had no qualms to impose it,” said Salinas Superior Court Judge John M. Phillips. Because the death penalty in effect in 1962 was later declared unconstitutional, life in prison with the possibility of parole was the maximum term available. Hillery may become eligible for parole almost as soon as he returns to prison because of the length of time served. He won a new trial when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that blacks had been systematically excluded from the Kings County Grand Jury that indicted him.