Murder Trial Jury Rejects Insanity Plea : Cal State Professor Faces Prison Term of 17 Years to Life

A Superior Court jury Wednesday rejected the idea that Cal State Fullerton professors Richard L. Smith was insane when he killed his girlfriend’s estranged husband.

The same jury that last Thursday convicted the 44-year-old Smith of second-degree murder took only two hours to decide that he was sane when he shot Donald Lee Matters to death in front of Matters’ condominium in Orange on May 3, 1984.

Smith, former head of the university’s philosophy department, faces 17 years to life in prison when he goes back before Judge John J. Ryan May 2 for sentencing.

Killing Acknowledged

Deputy Dist. Atty. Thomas Avdeef had charged that the shooting resulted from Smith’s desire to help his girlfriend and former student, Consuelo Matters, in a divorce dispute with her estranged husband.

Defense attorney Gary Proctor acknowledged during the six-week trial that Smith had killed Matters, 38. But the lawyer told jurors that Smith had been acting in a diminished mental state when he confronted the construction worker as he came out of his home to go to work that morning.

To support his contention that Smith’s mental state was impaired, Proctor called as witnesses several psychologists and psychiatrists who had diagnosed Smith as a chronic paranoid schizophrenic and said he was in a delusional state in which he could not form the intent to kill.

The eight-man, four-woman jury rejected that argument, but it did not wholly accept Avdeef’s claim that Smith was guilty of first-degree murder--that he had carefully planned the killing ahead of time.

Lacking that premeditation, jurors found Smith guilty of second-degree murder. Jurors found that when Smith pulled his gun, he intended to kill Matters.

‘Jury Did Correct Thing’

Smith had pleaded not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity. The second plea made necessary this week’s hearing at which the jury heard more testimony and decided on his sanity at the time of the killing. If Smith had been found insane, he would have been committed to a hospital for psychiatric treatment rather than be going to prison.

“That jury did the correct thing,” said Avdeef, the prosecutor. “They obviously found there wasn’t sufficient evidence to support what the psychiatrists said.”

“We’re relieved that it’s over,” said Kenneth Matters, who along with his wife, Dorothy, had sat through the entire trial of their son’s killer. “Now we can finally put this to rest.

“We’re not exactly happy about it (the second-degree verdict), but we’re resigned to it,” said Matters, who lives in El Cajon.