Week in Review : MAJOR EVENTS, IMAGES AND PEOPLE IN ORANGE COUNTY NEWS. : COURTS : Additional Funds Voted for Kraft Prosecution

Dist. Atty. Cecil Hicks said he needs the money--$331,687--for additional help to prosecute Randy Kraft, who is charged with 16 murders in Orange County and may be charged with 22 more.

Kraft’s county-paid defense lawyers are spending perhaps $2 million, Hicks said. Kraft was arrested three years ago, and Hicks said the case might continue 2 1/2 more years.

In the end, the county supervisors voted the allocation, but not before letting off some steam.

Supervisor Roger Stanton said that “through county money we’re creating new wealth out there on the part of defense attorneys.” There is a “built-in incentive to elongate these cases until (defense attorneys’) retirement.”

Supervisor Thomas F. Riley grumbled that law schools should teach the need for swifter justice. “We had this once, particularly in the West,” he said.

Supervisor Harriett Wieder said it is hard to understand why Kraft had to be prosecuted for 16 murders “when we could simply be pursuing the strongest three or four cases against him.”

It’s hard to tell that to the relatives of victims, responded Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. James Enright. Besides that, multiple convictions are harder to overturn on appeal, he added.

Enright told supervisors that two fellow jail inmates had planned to kill Kraft but that guards had prevented it. He described one defense lawyer as “worried.”

Wieder reacted, saying that defense lawyers are worried because “they didn’t want to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.”

Told of supervisors’ remarks, defense attorney Thomas McDonald called them “irresponsible statements made by people who really should know better. . . .”