California man pleads guilty in deadly Strip incident

A 29-year-old California man, accused of mowing down 14 people on a Strip sidewalk, killing three, pleaded guilty but mentally ill Monday and agreed to a sentence of hundreds of years in prison.

"You will spend the rest of your natural life in the Nevada Department of Corrections. Do you understand that?" District Judge Michelle Leavitt asked Stephen Ressa. Ressa said he understood.

On Sept. 21, 2005, Ressa drove a Buick sedan into a crowd of people on the Strip near Bally's resort, killing Gordon Kusayanagi, 52, of Hollister, Calif., Mark Modaressi, 26, of Irvine, Calif., and 60-year-old Richard Bradford of Renton, Wash., and injuring others.

Authorities said the crash occurred shortly after Ressa beat his mother unconscious and stole her car from her home in Rialto, Calif.

Ressa told police he was not on drugs when he drove up on the sidewalk in front of Bally's. He thought the pedestrians were armed "demons" who were trying to kill him, according to his arrest report.

"He's insane," said Kusayanagi's mother, Sumi.

She and her family attended the plea hearing and said their hope for Ressa's penalty has been that he remain in custody for the rest of his life.

"If it's a dungeon -- no windows, no TV, no bar bells," Sumi Kusayanagi said.

Her son and his wife were on vacation in Las Vegas when Ressa drove into the crowd.

"There are other family members that would have preferred he get the death penalty," Gordon Kusayanagi's 26-year-old daughter, Sarah Mosunic, said.

Prosecutors Marc DiGiacomo and Joshua Tomsheck were set to seek the death penalty if the case went to trial, but they agreed not to pursue execution in exchange for Ressa's plea of guilty to 18 counts. They said they were unaware of a longer sentence in Nevada than the one to which Ressa agreed.

The former college baseball player is set to be sentenced in November to six life terms without the possibility of parole for three counts of murder with use of a deadly weapon. The sentences will run consecutive to his sentence of 52 to 520 years for 13 charges of attempted murder with use of a deadly weapon and his sentence of two to 16 years for possession of a stolen vehicle and for battery by a prisoner.

Shortly after his arrest in 2005, Ressa stabbed a corrections officer with a pencil, according to court documents.

Ressa was the first murder defendant to plead guilty but mentally ill since the Nevada Supreme Court eliminated the plea in 2001. The 2007 Legislature reinstated the plea effective Monday.

That is why prosecutors and defense attorneys scheduled Ressa's plea for Monday. Ressa previously had pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.

"The chances of him getting the death penalty were substantial," said Ressa's defense attorney, Joseph Abood. "What we really wanted was for him to get mental health treatment in prison."

Abood spoke with Gordon Kusayanagi's family before the sentencing to convey the sympathies of Ressa's parents, whose anguish was obvious on their faces as they sat in the back of the courtroom.

Ressa's lawyers have said they think Ressa suffers from paranoid schizophrenia, but prosecutors have a different take. "Our position is any psychosis he has is based on years of voluntary methamphetamine use," DiGiacomo said.

The plea requires District Judge Michelle Leavitt to review mental health evaluations of Ressa from both sides' doctors. If Ressa is found to suffer from mental illness, she will order the Department of Corrections to follow prescribed treatments and house Ressa apart from the general population in prison until a licensed doctor finds he no longer needs acute mental health treatment.

Ressa can file a complaint if he thinks the Corrections Department is not providing him with the treatment the court has ordered, Leavitt said.