Friends of Slain Man Plan to Seek New Trial

Friends of Lee Owens, a one-legged Van Nuys machinist shot to death by his ex-girlfriend, say they plan to fight the court ruling that set her free, a ruling that triggered a legal struggle between prosecutors and the judge in the case.

But prosecutors said the group has almost no chance of reversing the decision and putting the woman, Melody Kay Runyan of Van Nuys, on trial again.

Bruce Whitcomb, Owens’ former employer, complained Monday that Runyan’s trial on manslaughter charges became so deeply tangled in a feud between the district attorney’s office and Van Nuys Superior Court Judge Melvin B. Grover that justice was not done.

“The whole case was mishandled because the district attorney’s office and the judge were at each other’s throats the whole time,” said Whitcomb, the owner of Wenco, an automobile drive shaft machining shop in Van Nuys.

Deadlocked for Acquittal

A jury in Judge Grover’s court deadlocked 10 to 2 for acquittal of Runyan earlier this month. The judge dismissed the charge and said he would not grant the prosecution a retrial. The decision set off a campaign by deputy district attorneys to prevent Grover, whom they accused of bias against the prosecution, from hearing any criminal trials.

Whitcomb said he and “about 10 or 15” other friends of Owens’ plan to go to Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner to demand that his office appeal the judge’s ruling and refile the charge against Runyan--”and refile it as murder one, if it could be.”

The group does not have a lawyer, but is seeking one, he said.

“Miscarriages of justice happen all the time, and I honestly don’t know what we can do about it, but we want to do something,” Whitcomb said.

Mike Carroll, head deputy of the district attorney’s Van Nuys office, said the key question, even if the prosecution succeeded in getting another trial, is “do we have a reasonable likelihood of prevailing?”

‘We Had Our Day in Court’

He expressed doubt that the prosecution could get a guilty verdict in another trial.

“These people have every right to be offended,” he said of Owens’ friends. “We share with them the feeling that things didn’t happen as they should have. However, we had our day in court. We got trounced badly by various forces. It has to be extraordinary to demand another day in court.”

Deputy Dist. Atty. Linda Greenberg, who prosecuted Runyan, said: “One of the problems we had with the case was the victim’s violence to the defendant.” The defense produced “powerful witnesses” and evidence that Owens had mistreated Runyan, supporting Runyan’s argument that she shot him in self-defense.

“I just don’t feel in my mind that we’d get a conviction,” even if the case were tried again before another judge, Greenberg said.

Runyan, 25, had once lived with Owens, 50. After she moved out, they continued a stormy relationship, testimony showed.

On the morning of the shooting, Owens pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor battery charge stemming from a fight between them, and a judge ordered him to stay away from Runyan. Runyan said Owens had pulled out clumps of her hair, and that she began carrying a pistol because he had threatened to kill her.

She testified that he confronted her in the parking lot of a self-service laundry in Van Nuys. The prosecution argued that Runyan, a jogger and body builder, could have easily run away from Owens, who had one artificial leg. She testified that he caught up with her when she stopped to remove her high heeled shoes and that she then shot him four times with a .44-caliber revolver.

During the trial, the judge ruled out 18 of the 22 prosecution witnesses, and he and Greenberg clashed openly in court several times. Prosecutors said the case was only the latest in a series of trials in which Grover unfairly hindered the prosecution.

Since then, the district attorney’s office has acted to disqualify Grover from every criminal case he has been assigned, filing more than 100 “affidavits of prejudice,” which cause the cases to be assigned to other judges. Prosecutors said they will file such affidavits in every case coming up before the judge.

The feud has escalated, with Grover rejecting some of the affidavits and other judges saying Grover should not be pressured by the district attorney’s office.

When Grover’s cases were reassigned to Superior Court Judge James A. Albracht, a former prosecutor, public defenders in turn filed affidavits of prejudice to disqualify him, sending the cases to a third judge. Carroll called their action “a tit-for-tat maneuver that is not supported by actual experience with the judge.”