Ramirez Trial May Take Two Years : Slow Pace of ‘Stalker’ Case Tests Patience of Judiciary

On a hot Saturday morning almost three years ago, the capture of the Night Stalker suspect ended an unparalleled reign of fear in Southern California. But for Phil Halpin, the arrest of drifter Richard Ramirez marked only a beginning.

The veteran Los Angeles County prosecutor spent that entire Labor Day weekend methodically constructing an air-tight case designed to send Ramirez to San Quentin’s gas chamber. And when the courts reopened on Tuesday morning, Halpin quickly filed the charges--even though he had until the close of business on Wednesday to do so.

Caught off guard, a senior county public defender returning from lunch had to rush into court, past the TV camera crews, to obtain a one-week delay on Ramirez’s behalf.

“We were ready to go in 1985,” Halpin recalled.

But such prosecutorial zeal would prove decidedly out of step with most everything else in the long-winded case.

There would be time. Lots of it.

Now the pale, aloof defendant is about to stand trial, charged with murdering 13 people and committing a string of sadistic nighttime attacks on many others.

But with nearly 1,000 potential witnesses--ballistics and forensic experts, doctors and eyewitnesses--the case in all likelihood will run into the next decade. And with a projected two-year trial, People vs. Ramirez could become one of the longest criminal trials in U.S. history. It may not reach a final disposition before the turn of the century.

For the less juridically minded, the Night Stalker case has all the trappings of a sensational murder trial: A defendant whose courtroom comportment has been less than predictable; opposing lawyers whose apparent contempt for one another has nearly led to fisticuffs; an easygoing judge whose patience is being severely tried. Earlier, the bickering attorneys caused another judge to threaten to throw them all in jail.

Jury Selection to Start

Barring any unforeseen, 11th-hour delays, jury selection is to start Thursday. But first, trial judge Michael A. Tynan of the Los Angeles Superior Court has a delicate, closed-door meeting on Monday morning with Ramirez’s lawyers--from which the prosecutors are barred.

The defense lawyers asked for the meeting in order to officially inform Tynan that they have fully explained to Ramirez his option to plead not guilty by reason of insanity and that Ramirez has chosen not to do so. If the rules governing such extraordinary ex parte proceedings are not followed precisely, there is a danger that an appellate court could later order a new trial in the event of a guilty verdict, Halpin said.

But while a judgment by a jury clearly is quite some time off, the verdicts already are coming on the criminal justice system itself: The case is either a twisted exploitation of that system by the defense or--depending on one’s viewpoint--a shining case-study of a suspect’s constitutional rights being fully protected in the face of a lynch-mob mentality.

There is abundant ammunition for each side. The Ramirez case is “an embarrassment to the criminal justice system,” fumed Gilbert I. Garcetti, chief deputy Los Angeles County district attorney.

“It’s the refusal of the system to take a strong stance,” added Ernie Norris, another senior county prosecutor. “To give the defense all the time it wants to prepare a case is without any merit. It’s a major impediment. Nobody wants to railroad a defendant. But the pendulum has swung entirely the other way. We’re talking about reason here.”

Opposing View

But it is “not at all” unreasonable for the case to have taken this long to reach trial, countered Stanley P. Golde, who may have more experience in death penalty trials than anybody in California.

It is common for the defense to take up to a year or more to prepare for a death penalty trial that involves just one first-degree murder charge, Golde noted. Now an Alameda County Superior Court judge, he has presided over 37 death penalty trials and defended, as a private lawyer earlier, seven suspects in capital cases.

“The length of time it’s taken is not that extreme,” said public defender Henry J. Hall, who was among the first defense lawyers in the case. “It’s like preparing for 13 separate trials. I’m frankly surprised they (the current defense attorneys) got it together as quickly as they did,” he said. “What people don’t understand is that the defense starts out two miles behind. It must review all the evidence, interview witnesses, follow up leads and theories. All these tasks are time-consuming, and they require detailed, meticulous evaluation.”

Even Halpin, one of the county’s most highly regarded criminal prosecutors, is willing to concede that People vs. Ramirez is about as complicated as a criminal case can get. But he added: “This case is not overwhelming or unmanageable. But it does require some serious application to relevant matters.”

In addition to 13 first-degree murder counts, Ramirez, 28, faces 30 other serious felonies, including attempted murder, burglary, robbery, rape and sodomy.

Beaten and Captured

He was beaten and captured on Aug. 31, 1985--about 12 hours after police publicly identified him as the Night Stalker suspect--by residents of East Los Angeles as he tried to commandeer a getaway car.

Ramirez’s apprehension came three weeks after Los Angeles County Sheriff Sherman Block announced that a killer, still at large, had committed a half-dozen or so murders throughout the county since May.

The killer seemed to strike at random, ranging all over Los Angeles County (and later to Orange County and San Francisco). Typically, he broke into victims’ homes at night. Each new attack seemed to embolden him. Near the end, the killer had begun taunting police by leaving a trademark: crudely drawn pentagrams at the crime scene--and even on a victim.

By the end of August, the rate of gun sales in Los Angeles County had doubled. The sale of locks, window bars and other protective devices also rose sharply.

The records in Case No. A 7771272 occupy four four-drawer file cabinets and a half-dozen cardboard boxes--containing hundreds of thousands of pages of photographs, witness statements, medical reports, transcripts--and the names of more than a half-dozen judges who have presided over some phase of the pretrial machinations.

Investigators in the case have had to travel to San Francisco, Texas, Arizona and Mexico in search of evidence and potential witnesses. And in one day, Ramirez’s lawyers have had to appear before three different judges to sort out various issues.

In Orange County, where Ramirez also faces felony charges, the defense lawyers were taken to small claims court by a court reporter in a dispute over the cost of daily transcripts during his preliminary hearing there. (They lost.)

“Every day it’s a battle,” lamented San Jose attorney Arturo Hernandez, one of Ramirez’s defense lawyers.

Most of all, there have been defense motions galore. About 100 of them.

“We have to do everything the law prescribes. And we haven’t done one motion that isn’t warranted. Every one has been very intricate, very nouveau, “ said Hernandez. “Once a defendant is executed, there is no coming back.”

Motions and Appeals

There have been motions to suppress witness identifications. Motions to suppress various Ramirez statements. Motions to exclude all sorts of evidence, including two guns and a car. Motions that challenge the way prospective jurors are selected. Motions to remove judges from the case. Motions to have certain charges tried separately. Motions to move the trial out of L.A. County. Motions to dismiss all charges against Ramirez.

Most of these motions were denied; most were appealed.

One led to two appeals--one by each side. This occurred after the defense sought access to 18 months worth of local police records of crimes with any possible semblance to the Night Stalker attacks, such as murders committed in residences or those involving sexual assaults, the use of ligatures, satanic references by the perpetrator or eye-gouging.

Judge Tynan denied that request. But the state Court of Appeal granted the defense a total of six months’ worth of such records, starting from June 1, 1985. The defense attorneys thought that was not enough; the prosecution thought it was too much.

So both sides appealed to the state Supreme Court, which eventually refused to consider the matter.

Protracted Arguments

Most of the motions in the case involved protracted arguments by the opposing lawyers, and many required expert testimony and other supporting material. For instance, the change-of-venue motion had to be buttressed by the printed and broadcast news accounts of the Night Stalker case. And many of those reports had to be translated into English.

The motion challenging jury eligibility procedures required complex testimony by academic experts and court officials that prompted Tynan to pull out a pocket calculator.

Another pretrial motion, granted early on in the case by Municipal Judge Elva R. Soper, was one for a gag order to have all parties refrain from discussing the substance of the case.

This was prompted by the behavior of public officials after Ramirez’s arrest. In more than one Southern California jurisdiction, public ceremonies were held and awards were given to celebrate and to recognize those who had investigated the Night Stalker crimes and who had a role in the suspect’s capture. “We don’t need to wait for an arbitrary legal process to run its course before handing out the rewards,” Mayor Tom Bradley had said only six days after Ramirez’s arrest.

Challenge to Judge

In late June, when the case appeared ready for trial, the defense lawyers demanded a new trial judge, saying that Tynan had become so biased that he could no longer preside impartially. But the challenge was denied by Presiding Judge Phillip E. Cox of the Orange County Superior Court.

“We don’t want to be found incompetent (by an appellate court) and have to go through a retrial,” Hernandez said, explaining the countless pretrial motions. “History shall absolve us.”

His co-defense counsel, Daniel Hernandez, also of San Jose, added: “We have an obligation and a duty to raise whatever issues.”

In and out of court, questions have arisen over the ability of the Hernandezes (who are not related) to defend Ramirez. The two have never tried a death penalty case.

But in California, a defendant can hire any licensed lawyer he chooses, and their arrangement is nobody else’s business. The Hernandezes were retained by Ramirez’s relatives, who are working-class people of limited means from El Paso, Tex. And that has fueled speculation that the Hernandezes might have been assigned the legal rights to Ramirez’s life story as the payoff. But the defense attorneys deny there is such an arrangement.

“We’re not going to get rich from the case,” added Arturo Hernandez, 34.

He said a recent $700,000 settlement of a personal injury lawsuit is going a long way toward paying for their expenses in the Ramirez case. “People tend to confuse the good-hearted with the stupid,” he said.

The first official order of business is jury selection.

Judge Tynan and the lawyers must find 12 people who are willing and able to serve for up to two years. The judge and lawyers must be convinced that the prospective jurors are open-minded about Ramirez’s innocence or guilt--despite the massive publicity surrounding the Night Stalker case.

These prospective jurors then will be interviewed individually about their views on capital punishment. In this stage, “We ask a lot of very, very personal and penetrating questions,” said Golde, the state’s leading expert on death penalty cases. “The real crux of a lawyer’s skill is in picking a jury.”

After a jury is finally impaneled, Tynan wants to pick another 12 people to serve as alternates--as insurance against juror attrition during the projected two-year trial.

In all, 2,000 people may have to be interviewed. “Jury selection can last as long as a lawyer’s voice lasts, and nothing is sweeter to a trial lawyer than his own voice,” said Wilbur Littlefield, Los Angeles County’s chief public defender.

“If they pick a jury in six to eight months, they’re doing their jobs well,” Golde added.

In the early months of the case, many delays were caused by a flurry of defense lawyers who entered and then left the case.

The first to represent Ramirez were lawyers from the taxpayer-funded Los Angeles County Public Defenders office.

Falling-Out With Attorneys

But Ramirez soon had a falling-out with Allen Adashek and Henry Hall. It was only after a series of cameo appearances on the periphery of the case by attorneys from as far away as Texas and San Francisco that the Hernandezes became the attorneys of record. They were referred to the Ramirez family by a mutual acquaintance.

The Hernandezes, both one-time migrant farm workers, had briefly roomed together in San Jose after law school, while studying for the Bar examination. “We hit it off really well,” Arturo Hernandez recalled. The two later teamed up in many criminal cases that came their way in East San Jose, including homicides.

His easygoing mien notwithstanding, Arturo Hernandez in court has accused Halpin of perjury and threatened “to take him outside and teach him a lesson.” Halpin, 50, has referred to Hernandez as “a clown.”

At another point, Daniel Hernandez, 44, demanded that Halpin be held in contempt of court for having left the courtroom for about 60 seconds during the 1986 preliminary hearings. That prompted this warning from Superior Court Judge James F. Nelson: “Unless you are all very anxious to share the same cell, I would suggest that you stop using the court record to cast aspersions on each other.”

Shouts, ‘Hail Satan’

And then there’s the defendant himself. After pleading not guilty, Ramirez shouted “Hail Satan!” as he was led from the courtroom. During testimony in the preliminary hearings, particularly gruesome details seemed to animate Ramirez. During a break, he was heard to utter unintelligible chants from a holding cell.

Ramirez is evidently something of an artist. Once he drew an inverted pentagram, supposedly a symbol of devil worship, on his palm and flashed it in open court--to the delight of a small but loyal coterie of followers who have become courtroom fixtures. Another time, Ramirez drew an uncanny caricature of Halpin--with a dog’s body.

During another court proceeding, Ramirez was pummeled by court bailiffs who apparently thought he looked too menacingly at a witness as she walked by him.

One unsettling incident occurred in Orange County in September. In a hearing, the lights suddenly went out. The deputy marshals drew their pistols and shouted for every one to hit the floor as two other marshals dragged Ramirez, his feet shackled, out of the courtroom.

For the most part, however, the innumerable court appearances have been unremarkable. And the lanky Ramirez seems content to sit, slouched in a chair (feet still shackled), occasionally drumming his palms on the defense table, his head bobbing to some music unheard by others.

Cost Put at $1 Million

The public cost of People versus Ramirez has not been much of an issue since the defendant’s attorneys fees do not come out of county coffers. County budget officials have put at about $1 million the court resources taken up by the case so far--such as the salaries of court personnel. Mostly, it is the delays in the case that have inspired much debate.

“Because a life is at stake, the courts must be particularly sensitive,” Golde said.

But even Littlefield, the chief public defender whose deputies battle county prosecutors in court every day, conceded that the case should not have taken “this long.” Such endless “continuances,” he said, can become “a nightmare” for the prosecution as memories fade and witnesses become unavailable. One witness already has died, according to co-prosecutor Alan S. Yochelson, 33.

Yet, delays may also have a silver lining, considering the initial, massive publicity in the case.

The passage of time can offset such pretrial publicity--and perhaps ensure a fair and impartial trial, said Pasadena lawyer Charles A. Maple.

“Time has a way of reordering the priorities,” said Maple, a one-time public defender who two decades ago represented Gregory U. Powell in the so-called Onion Field police killing trials that were prosecuted by, among others, Phil Halpin.