Sidewalk Driver Found Guilty of Girl’s Murder

Daniel Lee Young, the mentally disturbed young man who admitted that he plowed his car through a crowd of pedestrians on a busy Westwood sidewalk last summer, was found guilty Friday of first-degree murder and attempted murder by a jury that will next determine whether Young was responsible for his actions or legally insane at the time.

After four days of deliberations, the Santa Monica Superior Court jury of three men and nine women found Young, 21, of Inglewood, guilty of one count of murder and 48 counts of attempted first-degree murder in the July 28 incident that left a 15-year-old girl dead and 48 other persons injured.

Young had pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. His attorney, Deputy Public Defender Irwin Pransky, who maintained that Young was not responsible for his actions, said Young had been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic by psychiatrists and was under a doctor’s care at the time of the crime.

Pransky also pointed out that Young told police that he drove through the Westwood crowd on the eve of the Olympics to call the world’s attention to “a great injustice.” The lawyer said Young believed that he was the victim of a mass conspiracy by which Congress ordered him to write hit movies and songs--including all the songs recorded by pop star Michael Jackson--without receiving money or credit for them.

Superior Court Judge Jacqueline L. Weiss scheduled the second phase of the trial, during which the jury will consider whether Young was legally sane at the time of the crime, for Tuesday. If he is judged sane, Young faces up to 106 years in prison, according to Deputy Dist. Atty. John H. Reid, the prosecutor in the case.

If the jury rules that he was insane at the time of the crime, Young will be diagnosed to determine whether he has regained his sanity, Reid said Friday. If so, “he could walk out the door,” Reid added.

If Young is judged to be still insane, however, he will be remanded to a mental hospital until it is determined that he has regained his sanity, Reid said.

Shown to Be Mentally Ill

Although Reid said that evidence during Young’s trial clearly showed him to be mentally ill, the prosecutor nevertheless contends that mental illness cannot be equated with legal insanity.

Reid said Young “knew right from wrong” at the time he committed the crime and should therefore be judged legally sane.

Pransky, however, said the law regarding legal insanity in California “is not definitive” and remains open to interpretation, especially in light of challenges before the state Supreme Court regarding the constitutionality of Proposition 8, the 1982 initiative that reinstated a stricter insanity test in the state.