Judge Preempts Jury in Penalty Phase of Murder Case; Pettus Gets Life Term

An Orange County Superior Court judge preempted a jury Tuesday, ruling that a 20-year-old man convicted of first-degree murder should not be sentenced to death.

Judge Leonard H. McBride sentenced Zachary F. Pettus to life imprisonment without possibility of parole for the stabbing and strangulation of Darlene Hazboun, 37, during an Oct. 18, 1983, robbery in Huntington Beach.

According to James Enright, chief deputy district attorney, this is the first such ruling by an Orange County judge since the current death penalty statute took effect in 1977.

“It was not the intention of the people of the State of California that the person sitting in the defendant’s chair today be sentenced to death,” McBride said in an interview.

Mitigating Factors

The main factors contributing to his decision, McBride said after issuing his ruling from the bench, were that Pettus had no history of violent behavior and no previous criminal record, and that there was no compelling evidence that the victim had been tortured before her death.

After conferring with Pettus in a court holding cell, defense attorney Milton Grimes of Santa Ana said his client was “relieved that he’s no longer facing the death penalty. It’s a heavy burden lifted from his shoulders.”

Grimes requested that the judge consider reducing the sentence while he is awaiting a probation report and recommendation, due March 8, at which time Grimes said he also will appeal the verdict.

Pettus was found guilty on Jan. 17 of first-degree murder under two special circumstances, and the jury reassembled Tuesday morning to begin the penalty phase of the trial.

Declines Comment

Before announcing his decision, McBride asked Deputy Dist. Atty. Patrick Geary if the prosecutor wanted to present any additional material dealing with aggravated circumstances of the crime. Geary said he did not, and he later declined to comment on the judge’s decision.

“The murder itself was a brutal crime,” McBride said. “All murders are brutal.”

However, the judge told the jury that the “law and the facts” presented in court during the five-month trial could not sustain a death sentence, even if the jurors were to recommend one.

“My mind was firm,” he told the jurors, before excusing them with his thanks. “I couldn’t see the sense of spending the money and keeping you from your lives any longer” by going through with the penalty phase of the murder trial.

Under California law, a jury may recommend death or life imprisonment without parole when a defendant is convicted of murder under special circumstances, such as during the commission of a burglary or robbery. A judge may then reduce a jury’s recommendation of death to a life sentence, but cannot increase a life sentence to death.

Enright called the decision “unusual” but added, “I wasn’t in the courtroom for the trial, and the judge was.”

Jay Bloom, deputy attorney general and the office’s death penalty coordinator for Southern California, also termed the ruling “unusual.” He said he was unaware of a similar decision in the state.

The judge, sitting in Westminster, said he would have reversed the jury recommendation if it had voted to send Pettus to the gas chamber, although McBride said he was certain the jurors would recommend mercy.

McBride acknowledged that his ruling might be unpopular, given the strong pro-death-penalty climate in the county.

“I knew what the political atmosphere was the last time I ran,” McBride said of the six-year term to which he was elected in 1980. “If what I find is contrary to that atmosphere, I can’t let that affect my decision.”

According to legal authorities, very few states permit a judge to overrule a jury’s recommendation in a death penalty case, and only three states--Alabama, Indiana and Florida--allow a judge to disregard a jury’s recommendation of mercy and impose the death penalty.

A challenge to that situation, Spaziano vs. Florida, reached the U.S. Supreme Court in July, 1984. Opponents of the death penalty presented evidence that from 1972 to 1984, Florida judges had overruled jury recommendations on 83 occasions, in each case sentencing defendants to death.

By coincidence, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling Monday that will make it more likely that juries hearing cases such as Pettus’ trial will recommend the death penalty. In a 7-2 decision, the court said that prospective jurors may be excused if they are generally opposed to capital punishment. In the past, only jurors with an overwhelming opposition to the death penalty could be excluded.

McBride, who had not read the decision, said that the ruling “might result in a more prosecution-oriented juror.”

Geary said the ruling would make jury selection in capital cases “a lot more logical,” but Grimes disagreed, suggesting that “the deck is just further stacked for conviction-minded jurors.”