Juror Forces Mistrial in Murder : Panel Member Opposes Death Penalty for Slayer

A lone juror who held out against the death penalty forced a mistrial Monday in the penalty phase of the trial of a Santa Ana man convicted of first-degree murder.

After a four-day recess, jurors returned to court Monday but quickly reported they were unable to break the deadlock. Eleven jurors wanted to recommend that Richard Ramirez be sentenced to death, but one held out for sending Ramirez to prison for life without the possibility of parole.

The holdout juror was not identified. Ramirez, 25, exhaled in obvious relief when the jurors announced their inability to reach agreement on his penalty, and he gazed into the faces of the seven men and five women as they filed from the jury box.

Plans to Repeat Phase

Deputy Dist. Atty. Thomas Goethals said he would repeat the penalty phase in an effort to persuade a different set of jurors to recommend to Orange County Superior Judge Donald A. McCartin that he sentence Ramirez to death. The judge makes the final decision on life without possibility of parole or death.

“We’re going to try it again, I’m positive,” Goethals said outside court. “When you have one out of 12 (vote in opposition), I respect that one’s opinion, but I’m going to try it again.”

The jurors who deliberated over which penalty to suggest to McCartin had convicted Ramirez on Feb. 13 of raping and murdering Kimberly Gonsalez, 22, on Nov. 21, 1983, behind a Santa Ana bar. They returned to the court March 4 to begin the penalty phase of the trial and deliberated the question of life or death for three days last week before recessing for four days.

Ramirez admitted leaving the bar with the woman but said she walked him to his car and bid him good night. During the trial to determine his guilt or innocence and the trial to recommend his sentence, Ramirez denied killing Miss Gonsalez.

Ramirez’s mother, Jane Gonzalez, broke down and wept as she begged the jurors to spare her son’s life and described his troubles with the law from the time he was 14.

‘The Real Killer’

“I want you to find the real killer,” she told her son’s attorney, Deputy Public Defender Ramon P. Ortiz, as she testified in court. “I’m willing to pay to find the real killer. He’s out there . . . ,” she said, her voice trailing off.

In the penalty phase of the trial, Goethals called as a witness a woman whom Ramirez raped at knife-point in 1977 and who said Ramirez cut her on her face the way Miss Gonsalez was cut.

Several jurors wept as the woman testified that Ramirez assaulted her several times and threatened to kill her and her son. She said when he entered her son’s room, she believed he was going to kill her and her child, so she fled outside her apartment and a neighbor called police.

After pleading guilty to raping the woman, Ramirez was sent to the California Youth Authority. After being released from detention, he was convicted of burglary and spent more time in jail before being arrested in the murder of Miss Gonsalez.

Goethals told the jury that Ramirez stabbed Miss Gonsalez 15 times, with some of the knife wounds to the base of the skull severing her spinal cord and leaving her paralyzed. Although there were no witnesses to the attack, police found a beer bottle with a fingerprint from Ramirez near the victim’s body.

Ortiz urged the jurors to spare Ramirez’s life because “life in a cage is appropriate punishment . . . . It is not necessary to kill him (Ramirez) to protect society.”

He said that at Ramirez’s age, “the sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole is especially hideous . . . . He will spend the rest of his natural life in prison. He will die in prison.”