Dead Man Found Guilty of Killing His Wife, Son, 8

In a move that could affect a battle over an estate of nearly $1 million, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge Tuesday formally declared a dead man guilty of murdering his wife and 8-year-old son to collect insurance money.

The unusual action by Judge Robert D. Fratianne was requested by Deputy Dist. Atty. Jeffrey C. Jonas, who said he is trying to prevent heirs of the late Clifford Lee Morgan from profiting from Morgan’s crimes. The insurance money should rightfully go to the heirs of the victims, Jonas said.

The bulk of Morgan’s estate of about $920,000 is money that Morgan received from insurance policies he had taken out on his wife and son, who were found brutally stabbed to death in their Van Nuys home on May 21, 1981.

The body of Nancy Morgan, 44, was marked with 45 knife wounds. Morgan’s son, Mitchell, was stabbed more than 20 times.

Clifford Lee Morgan, 47, took out the last insurance policy, for $400,000, two months before the killings.

Morgan, a former trucking company executive, and two co-defendants were found guilty of the murders in September, 1983. Morgan died of bone cancer before Fratianne could formally impose a judgment of guilt and begin the penalty phase of Morgan’s trial.

On Tuesday, Fratianne belatedly imposed that judgment, over the objection of Michael Doland, an attorney who represents Morgan’s estate.

“The district attorney has no business meddling in the rights of two equally guiltless sets of heirs,” said Doland, who argued that all criminal proceedings, including the pronouncement of judgment, must stop when a defendant dies. The attorney also suggested that Jonas, who prosecuted Morgan, was engaged in a “personal vendetta.”

Fratianne disagreed.

“If the law is going to close its eyes to a conviction (for) a brutal double murder . . .,” the judge told Doland, “then I’m going to take this robe off and leave this bench.”

Doland said he will try to have Fratianne’s ruling overturned by the state Court of Appeal.

Under California law, anyone convicted of murder or manslaughter in the death of another cannot inherit the dead person’s estate. What constitutes a conviction was the subject of much of the legal argument in Fratianne’s courtroom.

Fratianne cited an appellate court ruling that a conviction takes place only after a jury has determined a defendant’s guilt and a judge has upheld the verdict by formally pronouncing judgment. In that light, a defendant need not be formally sentenced in order to be convicted.

In Morgan’s case, the law means that if no judgment of guilt were to be entered, the insurance money would legally belong to Morgan’s estate, and that Morgan’s heirs--an ex-wife and four children by that marriage--would be first in line for it.

If Fratianne’s judgment of guilt is upheld, it is likely that most of the insurance money will instead go to the mother and sister of Nancy Morgan, said attorney Joseph Paulty, who represents the estate of Mitchell Morgan, the son who was killed.

Jonas had asked Fratianne to go a step further and actually impose a sentence on Morgan of life in prison without the possibility of parole. His co-defendants were both sentenced to death.

Fratianne said he found no provision in the law for sentencing a dead man. But, he added, “In this case, the sentence has been pronounced on Mr. Morgan. God is the avenger in this case.”