The California Supreme Court refused on Wednesday to hear the case against a man convicted of fatally stabbing his girlfriend and her mother and wounding a man who rented a room in the Carson-area condominium they all shared.
The state’s highest court denied a defense petition seeking review of the case against Virgil Tyrone Tate.
Tate was convicted last year of two counts of first-degree murder for the January 2012 killings of his girlfriend, Tracie Brooks, 32, and her mother, Carol Susan Brooks, 58. He was also convicted of one count of attempted murder for attacking the renter, who suffered several stab wounds.
Tracie Brooks was stabbed 15 times and her mother was stabbed 32 times in the condominium they shared in the 21800 block of South Vermont Avenue near Harbor-UCLA Medical Center.
Three blood-stained knives were found in the condominium, along with a broken wine glass.
The man who was wounded in the attack called 911, while Tate barricaded himself inside his bedroom. Tate was found naked when a Los Angeles County sheriff’s SWAT team burst into the condominium after a standoff that lasted about two hours.
Tate was sentenced in August 2013 to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
In July, a three-justice panel from California’s 2nd District Court of Appeal upheld Tate’s conviction. The panel rejected the defense’s contention that jurors should have been instructed on voluntary manslaughter, finding that there was “overwhelming evidence of appellant’s guilt.”
— City News Service