3 Face Separate Trials in Marine Murder Case

At least three, if not all six, defendants in the Laura Troiani murder-for-hire trial will be tried individually, Superior Court Judge Gilbert Nares ruled Tuesday, a decision that could string out the nearly 2-year-old murder case for another year or longer.

The first to go to trial will be Laura Troiani, 24, who is accused of soliciting the murder of her husband, Marine Staff Sgt. Carlo Troiani, by offering to pay five other Marines $500 each to kill him. Carlo Troiani, 37, was found shot to death on a rural Oceanside road on Aug. 10, 1984.

Troiani’s trial is scheduled to begin Aug. 4, nearly two years after her husband’s death.

After a verdict is reached in her case, a separate trial will begin for Mark Schulz, 21, accused of being the triggerman.

After that trial, the case against Russell Harrison, 21, who also is accused of being at the shooting scene, will go trial, according to Nares’ timetable.

The judge said he will decide Monday whether the other three defendants in the case--Russell Sanders, 21; Jeff Mizner, 22, and Kevin Watkins, 20--will be tried together or separately. Those three participated in the murder plot but were not at the scene of the shooting, the prosecution contends.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Phil Walden, who heads the county prosecutor’s office in Vista, said he expects that Nares will order separate trials for the other three defendants as well.

The D.A.’s office is seeking the death penalty for all six defendants since the killing allegedly was done for money and by ambush. The prosecution alleges that although there was only one triggerman, all six should face the same punishment because they conspired in the killing.

“There obviously will be an inconvenience for witnesses to come to court potentially six times, but that’s always a problem with multiple-defendant cases,” Walden said when asked the effect of Nares’ decision on the prosecution.

He said his office will present the same witnesses and evidence against all six defendants “because we have the same proof against all defendants, that this was a conspiracy. The judge’s ruling doesn’t hamstring us, evidentiary-wise.”

Jack Campbell, who represents Troiani and was designated the lead defense attorney among the 12 defense attorneys retained for the case, said he welcomed the separation of trials because “my client deserves individual attention when the stakes are this high.”

He and other attorneys said separate murder trials would eliminate the potential of jurors judging the guilt or innocence of all six defendants with one broad brush. Individual trials would better enable jurors to affix varying levels of culpability, if any, in the crime, attorneys said.

And separate trials with separate juries would prevent “antagonistic defenses” in which one defendant’s defense would undercut a co-defendant’s defense, or in which one defendant would put the blame on another, attorneys noted.

But Campbell speculated that even if Nares orders six separate trials, there may not be that many.

“The (Laura) Troiani case winds up being a bit of a test case,” he said. “The outcome of that trial may affect subsequent defendants. Just suppose how different verdicts might affect subsequent trials.”

Campbell suggested that the other defense attorneys might change their strategies depending on the outcome of Laura Troiani’s trial. Drawing an analogy to how golfers learn the breaks and rolls of a particular putting green by watching others putt before them, Campbell offered: “You’d rather putt second.”

Walden said that, once jury selection is completed, each individual trial probably will not last longer than four months, the length of the preliminary hearing after which all six were bound over to Superior Court.

“During the prelim, we were fighting 12 lawyers all at once. In that we’ll be dealing with only two attorneys at any given trial, it shouldn’t take any longer than the prelim,” he said.

Still, Walden said, “I can’t remember a case that will have taken as long as this one to complete.”