High Court Enters McMartin Case : Decision on Children’s Testimony by TV to Be Reviewed

The lengthy preliminary hearing in the McMartin Pre-School molestation case was delayed again late Friday when the state Supreme Court said it wanted time to review a defense request for reversal of a Superior Court ruling allowing remaining child witnesses to testify by closed-circuit television.

Hours earlier, the state 2nd District Court of Appeal had rejected--without comment--a petition filed by Deputy Public Defender Forrest Latiner, who represents defendant Peggy Ann Buckey.

Latiner immediately sent legal papers by courier to the Supreme Court in San Francisco, in hopes that the matter could be acted on early next week. The preliminary hearing had been scheduled to resume Monday.

Notified by telephone of the stay, Deputy Dist. Atty. Glenn Stevens, one of three prosecutors handling the case, said his office is “disappointed that we will not be able to present the evidence we planned . . . until the Supreme Court has decided whether or not to take up this issue.”

After reviewing Latiner’s petition, the high court could either lift the stay and allow the preliminary hearing to proceed or order a hearing on the matter.

Defense attorney Barbara Aichele, co-counsel for defendant Mary Ann Jackson, said she had filed a similar request for a stay and review of the closed-circuit television decision with the appeals court Friday in hopes that it might be assigned to a different appellate division and succeed where Latiner’s initially failed.

The McMartin proceedings, in which the owner of the Manhattan Beach nursery school and six former teachers are charged with molesting 41 children left in their care over a six-year period, were stopped last month after only 13 of the children had testified.

Prosecutors said only five young witnesses were still willing and able to testify and that they would do so only if a closed-circuit television arrangement were adopted because they are afraid to be in the same room with the defendants.

Municipal Judge Aviva K. Bobb ruled that recent state legislation authorizing such televised testimony could not be applied to the hearing because it was already in progress and the alleged crimes occurred before the law’s passage last May.

At the prosecution’s request, Superior Court Judge Paul Turner overturned Bobb’s ruling and ordered her to begin taking testimony Monday on the first remaining witness’s need to testify by television from a separate room.

Defense attorneys, predicting that Turner’s ruling would lengthen the yearlong hearing by at least another five months, argued that such an arrangement is unconstitutional because it impairs the defendants’ right to confront their accusers and violates ex post facto rules of law.

Turner, denying both arguments, concluded in a 43-page decision, “This court finds that it would be an abuse of discretion . . . to prevent five young children from testifying in accordance with the law as to the crimes against them and all society.”

Two-thirds of the original charges of molestation and conspiracy against the seven McMartin defendants have been dismissed because no evidence was presented to support them.

The five remaining witnesses are expected to testify to some 40 counts of molestation. Prosecutors have presented evidence on 90 counts and have asked Bobb to add 50 more counts that they say emerged during testimony.

Those accused are school founder Virginia McMartin, 77; her daughter, Peggy McMartin Buckey, 58; grandchildren Raymond Buckey, 27, and Peggy Ann Buckey, 29; Betty Raidor, 65; Mary Ann Jackson, 57, and Babette Spitler, 37.