Trigger warning: Parts of this article contain graphic details regarding a 1991 murder in Santa Clara.
In late January 1991, James Madden, manager at the LeeWards Creative Crafts in Santa Clara, was locking up for the night when two men, one of whom he likely recognized as a former employee, ambushed him. Armed with a stun gun, they led him back inside, where they forced him to open the safe before binding him to a chair with duct tape.
Then, joined by three other accomplices, they assaulted him with the stun gun. They stabbed him 32 times in the neck, chest and abdomen. Then they slit his throat.
Police eventually arrested the men involved in the robbery-turned-murder — Daniel Silveria, John Travis, Christopher Spencer, Matthew Jennings, and Troy Rackley, a juvenile. Silveria, Travis and Spencer ended up getting sentenced to death.
Now, Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen wants to remove that sentence, reducing it to life in prison. But one cop who worked the case believes the move is folly.
“It was a brutal, sadistic murder. I have investigated a lot of murders. I can’t say it is the worst, but it is one of the worst,” said Ted Keech, a former sergeant with the Santa Clara Police Department (SCPD), now retired. “These guys were not pleasant guys … there was nothing there to say they were a positive influence on our society.”
Earlier this month, Rosen announced he would be resentencing the 15 men on death row in the county. Although Gov. Gavin Newsom all but dismantled the death penalty in 2019, 625 men and 20 women still sit in prison with death sentences.
Since Rosen’s announcement, Keech has stridently been voicing his opposition. Given that Rosen has already publicly said he will no longer pursue the death penalty and has the right to choose whether to pursue it, Keech said the resentencing is nothing more than a “political move.”
Further, he said, rescinding death sentences goes against the will of Californians. In recent years, Californians have defeated two ballot initiatives, one in 2012 and another in 2016, that proposed abolishing the death penalty.
“If he wants to represent the defendants, let him work for the public defender’s office,” Keech said. “Jeff Rosen has crossed the line of the general public to the interest of those that have been tried and convicted of crimes.”
Keech said he is speaking up for the victim’s family, who have no one left to advocate for them.
Madden’s wife, Shirley, said after her husband’s death, her life was reduced to “just a big, sad open wound,” according to court testimony. She gained at least 30 pounds, suffered from depression and developed stress-induced psoriasis.
Rosen has said his reasoning is a shift in belief about the death penalty’s morality. He has called it an “indignity,” saying it is part of a broken system, one that is racially biased and error-prone.
Many have applauded the stance, but Keech isn’t alone in disagreeing with Rosen’s decision.
In an op-ed for the San Jose Mercury News, Ron Matthias, a former capital crimes litigator for the California Dept. of Justice, wrote, “… [Rosen’s] responsibilities to the public are properly defined not by his personal opinions but by the law as enacted by the voters and interpreted by the courts.”
A visit to the Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Ala. — a site that chronicles America’s history of lynching — helped change Rosen’s mind about capital punishment, he told the LA Times early this month.
But Keech said justice is about upholding the will of the people, not the DA’s sense of right and wrong. While he was quick to point the finger at Rosen for imposing his morality on the judicial system, Keech shirked questions about his own morality — one that informs his desire to see three men killed.
He simply said, “They deserve it,” pointing to the heinous nature of their crime, something Rosen has never disputed.
Nevertheless, Keech thinks Rosen’s beliefs have poisoned his ability to represent the people who put him in office.
“Everybody’s opinion is going to change. But if your opinion changes so that you are no longer able to represent the people you were elected to represent, you need to move on,” he said. “Do you think Rosen would go before the panel in Nuremberg and ask for life without parole?”
Rosen won nearly 55% of the vote in 2022. He will be up for election again in 2026.
