Professor Guilty of Slaying Girlfriend’s Estranged Husband

Cal State Fullerton professor Richard L. Smith was convicted Thursday of second-degree murder for the shooting death of the estranged husband of his girlfriend.

In returning the verdict after 2 1/2 days of deliberation, the jury essentially rejected defense attorney Gary L. Proctor’s contention that Smith, 44, acted in a diminished mental state when he killed Donald L. Matters on May 3, 1984.

The former head of the university’s philosophy department, who had pleaded not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity to a murder charge, rocked back and forth in his chair as the verdict was read and the eight-man, four-woman jury was polled.

In addition to the murder conviction, the jury also returned the special finding of using a gun to commit a crime, which adds two years to the 15-years-to-life prison sentence for second-degree murder.

Although Deputy Dist. Atty. Tom Avdeef had sought a first-degree murder conviction, the jury in the five-week trial decided that while Smith had malice aforethought--he intended to kill Matters--it was not a premeditated murder, and thus arrived at the second-degree verdict.

Proctor had argued that Smith’s mental state was such that he was not rational enough for such an intent.

“The main issue was malice aforethought, and they (jurors) disagreed,” he said afterward.

The same jury will now hear the trial’s sanity phase, which is expected to take two to three days and was scheduled to start Monday morning by Superior Court Judge John J. Ryan. If Smith is found to have been insane at the time of the shooting, he will not go free but will be committed to a hospital for psychiatric treatment.

Proctor said that despite the jury’s apparent rejection of his psychiatric defense during the guilt phase of the trial, he is prepared to argue the issue again in the sanity phase, but from a different perspective.

“Hopefully, we will not just rehash the background of this and will go on to deal with more important issues” which are, he said, whether Smith “appreciated the nature and quality of what he did and whether he knew right from wrong, that is, moral right or wrong, rather than under the law.”

Smith had waited outside the condominium complex in Orange where Matters lived and shot him four times as he came out to go to work early in the morning. Matters, 38, a construction worker, bled to death before paramedics arrived.

Proctor argued during the trial that Smith was guilty only of involuntary manslaughter because he was acting in a delusional state in which he believed he was saving his girlfriend and former student, Consuelo Matters, and her children from her husband during a divorce proceeding.

Psychiatrists and psychologists called to testify by Proctor cited Smith’s history of numerous hospitalizations for mental problems, dating back to 1967, and diagnosed him as a chronic paranoid schizophrenic. He takes small doses of Prolixin, a drug commonly used to treat schizophrenia.

All during the trial and even when the verdict was handed down, Proctor said, Smith felt “he was on the outside looking in. Psychologically, he is removed from these circumstances.”

Avdeef, the prosecutor, declined to comment on Thursday’s verdict because “the jury is, in effect, still out in this case and they can read what I would say.”

During the trial, however, Avdeef attacked the psychiatric defense, saying that the doctors who had examined Smith, some as much as a year after the killing, had only the information which he gave them on which to base their findings.

“None of them were there, but they can still say what his mental condition was” when he shot Matters, Avdeef observed. “The only thing they can do is guess.”

Calling Smith “smart and calculating,” Avdeef urged the jurors: “Don’t let him con you as he conned the psychiatrists.”

When Smith was arrested shortly after Matters was killed, many of his colleagues, friends and students joined to raise money to pay his attorney fees and post his bail. Some of them also attended the lengthy trial on a regular basis.

Craig Ihara, current head of the philosophy department and a close friend with whom Smith lived during part of the trial, said Thursday that the verdict “certainly could have been worse. But I guess we’re all disappointed that it wasn’t manslaughter. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens during the sanity phase.”