David Weidert buried a disabled man alive. Now Gov. Newsom must keep him in prison

There is justification for the recent trend in criminal justice of lowering penalties for low-level crimes and reviewing long sentences placed on people who might have been wrongly convicted.

However, convicted murderer David Weidert does not evoke any sympathy, despite the state parole board’s ill-conceived decision earlier this year to recommend that he be released on parole from his 25 years to life sentence.

Weidert was convicted in 1980 of a brutal killing of a developmentally disabled man in Clovis. And the inmate’s own behavior in subsequent parole board hearings show he has not taken proper responsibility for his actions. His case is now before Gov. Gavin Newsom, and The Bee encourages the governor to keep Weidert behind bars. That would be both the proper consequence of his heinous crime, and would further protect Californians from a dangerous man.

Buried alive

It is hard enough to recount the crime Weidert committed, much less imagine what victim Michael Morganti’s family has had to endure all these years afterward.

Morganti, who in 1980 was 20 years old, worked with Weidert for a janitorial service that cleaned a doctor’s office. Weidert, then 18, decided to steal $500 worth of property from the doctor; he recruited Morganti to be a lookout. Weidert did this despite growing up in a solid family with a father who at one time was the assistant U.S. secretary of agriculture. Nor did Weidert have drug addictions clouding his judgment.

Weidert, knowing that Morganti had witnessed his petty crime, decided to lure the man into his truck. Aided by a juvenile, Weidert took Morganti from his Clovis apartment to a spot in the foothills out of town. There, Weidert and his accomplice forced Morganti to dig what would become his grave. Morganti could tell the pair had evil intent and he began begging for his life, but to no avail.

Once the grave was big enough, Weidert and his young accomplice began beating Morganti with a baseball bat. Weidert stabbed Morganti in his back near his spine before the pair covered the man up with dirt.

Morganti, barely alive, still managed to push a hand through the earth, grab Weidert’s leg and lift his head out of the soil. The pair then tried to strangle Morganti with wire as he resisted. The pair then re-buried him.

An autopsy would find that Morganti suffocated from being covered; dirt and other organic material was in his mouth and lungs.

The torture occurred over 45 minutes.

One of the Valley’s congressmen at the time, Tony Coelho, would write a letter to the court asking for leniency for Weidert. The defendant would later use his upbringing to explain why he acted out of a sense of entitlement.

Rejected rationales

Gov. Jerry Brown found that reasoning unconvincing in 2015 when he overturned a granting of parole. Brown also was troubled in 2016 and 2018 by Weidert’s lack of insight into why he committed the murder. The parole board denied Weidert in 2016, with a commissioner noting how Weidert tried to mislead both the commissioners and psychologists about his case.

In an October letter to Newsom, Fresno County District Attorney Lisa A. Smittcamp relates the history of Weidert’s parole hearings. She notes how Weidert at one point tried to explain the murder as an impulsive act. Faced with opposition from Brown, Weidert then began admitting he wanted to kill Morganti from the start. Smittcamp says Weidert has learned during his imprisonment to give answers the parole board wants to hear, rather than genuinely understand what motivated his crime.

Smittcamp points out to Newsom that the parole board in 2018 and again this past August did not act with resolute scrutiny, but rather “spoon fed” questions to Weidert that would elicit answers that show him in a positive light. She remains unconvinced. “Inmate Weidert’s newfound insight and awareness concerning his motivation for the murder cannot possibly be described as well developed or internalized, if for no other reason than it changes at every hearing,” Smittcamp tells Newsom.

Risk too high

John Weidert, the inmate’s father who lived in Chowchilla, told the Associated Press in 2015 that his son was a changed man who had served his time and had earned the right to parole.

But Fresno County Sheriff Margaret Mims wrote Brown in 2015 that she could not imagine “how someone so barbaric can be paroled ... Inmate Weidert has proven his does not value human life and, as such, he should remain incarcerated for life.”

The Bee Editorial Board in 2015 agreed with that reasoning, and nothing since has changed that opinion. Weidert’s shifting explanations over time as to why he took Morganti’s life indicate he is not a changed man, despite his father’s best hope, but one who simply wants out of prison.

Michael Morganti was an innocent young man in 1980 who had a family who loved him when his life was brutally taken. As justice for him and his family, Weidert should remain behind bars.