Death penalty deliberations begin against man convicted of raping, killing Glendale woman in 1979
Jurors who convicted a man of raping and fatally shooting a Glendale woman 37 years ago began deliberating Tuesday whether he should be sentenced to death or to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
During closing arguments last week, the prosecutor recounted Darrell Gurule’s violent criminal record stretching back to 1977, while his defense attorneys, in a plea for mercy, argued that he had a troubled upbringing but found Christianity and peace in prison.
Gurule, 57, was convicted last month of murdering Barbara Ballman, whose naked body, lying across the front seat of her Volkswagen Beetle, was found by fourth-graders on their way to Thomas Edison Elementary School one September morning in 1979. She’d been raped and killed by a single shotgun wound to her abdomen.
Join the conversation on Facebook >>
“He stripped her of her clothing, he stripped her of her pride, he stripped her of anything that made her human,” deputy district attorney Jonathan Chung told the jury during his closing arguments last week. “Then he shot her and killed her.”
Ballman was attacked after leaving her older sister’s home the night before, where she was babysitting her young nephew before her sister came home. Together, the sisters ate sweet rolls and watched Donna Summer on television.
Ballman’s case went cold for decades, until breakthroughs in DNA analysis led Glendale detectives to Gurule in 2004, Chung said. By that time, he was serving a life sentence for kidnapping and fatally shooting a man in 1987.
His criminal record, however, began long before. In 1977, when Gurule was 17 years old, he held a woman at gunpoint, got behind the wheel of her car and drove her somewhere, where he made her strip and forced her to have oral sex.
Two years later, Chung said, Gurule was involved in a shotgun assault, and in 1982, he beat and robbed a 65-year-old veteran.
Chung disputed the defense’s argument that repeated beatings during Gurule’s childhood left him with brain damage and uncontrollable rage, pointing to his loving relationship with the mother of his son and the fact that he protected his own mother from domestic violence.
“He had the capacity to know what was good and what was bad,” Chung said.
In asking the jury to spare Gurule’s life, his attorneys said that in prison, where he will already spend the rest of his life, he’s had a clean record and spreads the gospel to other inmates.
“Darrell became the person we all hope prison would turn someone into,” said alternate public defender Philip Peng. “I’m asking you not to kill him.”
Jury deliberations will resume on Wednesday.
--
Alene Tchekmedyian, alene.tchekmedyian@latimes.com
Twitter: @atchek
MORE CRIME & PUBLIC SAFETY
Glendale motorcyclist, 16, dies in fatal motorcycle collision
Church volunteer, a ‘career criminal,’ arrested for allegedly stealing money from donation box
