Deukmejian Won’t Extradite Suspects in Domino’s Killings

Declaring that the return of the alleged Domino’s Pizza killers to face murder charges in South Carolina could jeopardize the murder case against them in Los Angeles, Gov. George Deukmejian today refused to order the extradition of the pair.

“The greater the period of time that elapses between the time the crime occurred and the time the trial takes place, the greater the possibility the evidence can get stale, the case can get compromised and it can make it more difficult to have a successful prosecution,” Deukmejian said in Sacramento.

Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner last month had asked that the two suspects--Mitchell Sims and Ruby Padgett--be returned to South Carolina before facing trial here because he believes that death penalty cases are tried more swiftly in the Southern state.

Deukmejian said Reiner’s recommendation “did not in any way affect my final decision. . . . Justice is served by taking the necessary steps to ensure the cases in either state are not jeopardized.”

Reiner is vacationing in Europe and unavailable for comment. But Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. Gilbert I. Garcetti said he was “dumbfounded by the decision,” calling extradition “a no-lose situation.”

“This greatly impedes our chances of successfully obtaining a death penalty” in the Los Angeles case, Garcetti said, noting that if the pair were already convicted of the South Carolina murders before being tried in California, those convictions could then be used against them in the penalty phase of their California trial.

Sims, 25, and Padgett, 20, are accused of murder in the Dec. 10 killing of a pizza deliveryman in Glendale and the Dec. 3 slayings of two Domino’s employees in South Carolina.