Convicted Slayer Gains in Fight to Escape Execution

Convicted killer Willie Wisely won another round Tuesday in his battle to escape the gas chamber when the 4th District Court of Appeal refused to reverse the trial judge’s decision to throw out Wisely’s death verdict.

Assistant Dist. Atty. Ed Freeman said later in the day that he will not appeal to the state Supreme Court and is undecided whether he will try again for another death verdict for Wisely.

Wisely, now 33, was convicted of first-degree murder in 1982 in the killing of his stepfather, Robert E. Bray, by rigging the cab of Bray’s truck to fall on him in a Huntington Beach street. Jurors also found that Wisely had been “lying in wait” across the street, a special circumstance that allowed them to give him the death penalty.

But Superior Court Judge Kenneth Lae, since retired, dismissed the jury’s death verdict and ordered a new penalty trial for Wisely. Lae cited a Supreme Court ruling that jurors should be instructed that they must find a defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of any prior crimes before using them in deciding on a death verdict.

Several previous crimes by Wisely had been brought before the jury, both by the prosecution and by Wisely himself, who was serving as his own attorney.

The district attorney’s office appealed Lae’s decision to the 4th District Court of Appeal. But in a unanimous decision made public Tuesday, the court ruled that Lae “properly considered the prejudicial impact of the instructional error. . . .”