David Lewis Rice
David Lewis Rice (born 1958), a follower of a right-wing extremist group the Duck Club, who, on Christmas Eve 1985, gained entry to the Seattle home of civil litigation[1][2] attorney Charles Goldmark using a toy gun and pretending to be a deliveryman.[3] He tied the family up, chloroformed them into unconsciousness, beat them with a steam iron, and stabbed them.[3] Rice mistakenly believed the family to be Jewish and Communist.[4] At trial, Rice argued he was not responsible for the crime because he was insane at the time.[5]
Rice was convicted in 1986 of aggravated murder for the four deaths and was sentenced to death.[3] The conviction was later overturned on the grounds of an incompetent defense.[2][6] Rice repeatedly displayed psychotic symptoms throughout his trial, but his attorney failed to emphasize them in his defense. In 1998, he pleaded guilty to the crimes[7] in exchange for avoiding the death penalty. He remains in prison serving out a life sentence.
The Goldmark Murders remain one of the most notorious anti-Semitic hate crimes as well as politically motivated killings in recent memory in the United States, even though the victims were not actually Jewish and Communist as the killer mistakenly believed. It also remains a cause célèbre of capital punishment proponents, since Rice avoided death based only on the ineptitude of his attorney's work at trial. Rice is currently incarcerated in Washington State Penitentiary.
Charles Goldmark's brother is Washington State Commissioner of Public Lands and head of the Washington Department of Natural Resources Peter J. Goldmark.
Rice was interviewed for the 1987 PBS documentary, Faces of the Enemy.[8]
References
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
External links
- 1958 births
- Living people
- Perpetrators of religiously motivated violence in the United States
- American prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment
- Prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment by Washington (state)
- American prisoners sentenced to death
- Prisoners sentenced to death by Washington (state)
- American people convicted of murder
- American mass murderers
- People convicted of murder by Washington (state)
- Antisemitism in the United States
- American critics of Judaism
