Note: This article revisits a story that first made national headlines in March 2016.
Cop Killer Who Impregnated Prison Guard Removed from Death Row After Shocking Legal Ruling
A convicted New York murderer—once sentenced to die for the cold-blooded execution of two NYPD detectives—has received a stunning legal twist: he’s been taken off death row after a federal judge ruled he is legally considered intellectually disabled.
Rowell Wilson, now 33, was originally sentenced to death for the 2003 killings of detectives James Nemorin and Rodney Andrews. The two officers, working undercover, were shot execution-style—each in the back of the head—during a botched gun sting operation in Staten Island, according to WPIX.
Prosecutors said Wilson, a member of the violent Stapleton Crew gang, planned to rob the detectives of $1,200 during the fake firearms transaction. Convicted in 2006, Wilson was sentenced to die by lethal injection.
However, in 2010, an appeals court threw out the sentence due to a jury error. After a new penalty phase in 2013, Wilson was once again condemned to death. He has been held at a federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, ever since.
Yet his case took another twist in 2012 when it was revealed that Wilson impregnated a New York City prison guard, Nancy Gonzales, while incarcerated. Their child, a son named Justus, was born shortly after Gonzales was arrested. She was later sentenced to one year and one day in prison for her relationship with the inmate, as reported by the Daily Mail.
Even before that scandal, questions had been raised about Wilson’s mental capacity. A 2012 hearing highlighted low IQ scores that could qualify him as intellectually disabled. Though the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2014 that IQ alone isn’t enough to make such a determination, a federal judge later found that Wilson indeed met the legal criteria for intellectual disability.
As a result, Wilson’s death sentence has been overturned. He will now serve life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Sources: Daily Mail, WPIX