No Possibility of Parole : Store Clerk’s Killer Given Life Sentence

A North Hollywood man who was convicted of murdering a grocery clerk while robbing a Sun Valley market was sentenced Friday to life in state prison without possibility of parole.

Sentencing was by San Fernando Superior Court Judge Dana Senit Henry.

The man, Mart Meiel, 37, was convicted by a jury last month of first-degree murder with special circumstances for the Sept. 19, 1982, death of Timothy Rea, 21. Rea was a member of the California State University, Northridge, volleyball team.

Death Penalty Not Sought

The district attorney did not seek the death penalty.

During Meiel’s trial, witnesses said that a man walked into a market at Sunland and Glenoaks boulevards and asked a checker for a pack of cigarettes. When the cashier opened the register to make change, witnesses said, the robber began grabbing cash from the drawer.

Rea was running to help the screaming cashier when he was shot once in the chest. Police officers said the robber escaped with $135.32.

Meiel was arrested in February, 1983, after an acquaintance of Meiel’s called police to report that Meiel had told him that he shot Rea. The acquaintance, Jesse Perry, earlier had been arrested for killing a young girl while driving drunk. He testified against Meiel in return for a prosecutor’s agreement to put in a good word for Perry when he appeared for sentencing.

Bolstered Case

At Perry’s sentencing last week, Robert P. Imerman, a deputy district attorney, urged Van Nuys Superior Court Judge James A. Albracht to sentence Perry to a short County Jail term instead of the maximum three-year state prison sentence because his testimony helped shore up the “extremely weak” identifications of Meiel by witnesses to the crime.

Perry was ordered to serve 270 days in County Jail.

At Perry’s sentencing, his attorney, Jonathan Ash, said Perry had received death threats from the Aryan Brotherhood, a white supremacist prison gang, for his testimony against Meiel, purportedly a member of the Aryan Brotherhood.

Meiel’s attorney, Michael Pogue, said after Meiel’s sentencing Friday that his client denies any affiliation with the gang.