Man Is Given the Maximum Term in Death

A 20-year-old La Habra man, convicted of stabbing a neighbor more than 80 times, was sentenced Thursday to 16 years to life in prison for second-degree murder.

The attorney for Michael Joe Whitton argued that he should instead be sentenced to the California Youth Authority because the crime had been committed when he was 16 years old.

Superior Court Judge John H. Smith Jr., however, sentenced Whitton to the maximum prison term permitted by law.

“The crime was so heinous and vicious that justice would demand the maximum sentence,” said the prosecutor, Deputy Dist. Atty. Brent F. Romney, after the sentencing.

Whitton was convicted of fatally stabbing Carlene Ruth Walker, 42, who had befriended Whitton. Neighbors said they saw him often at Walker’s home.

But shortly after midnight on Nov. 2, 1982, Brea police tried to stop the driver of a car with only one headlight and wound up chasing the vehicle through several residential areas until it crashed into a tree.

Officers arrested the driver, Whitton, after he tried to flee on foot. On the floor of the back seat of the car, they found Walker bleeding from the stab wounds. She died later at a hospital.

Walker later confessed to the murder but gave no reason. His motive, according to his attorney, Paul Meyer, “is still a question to this day.”

Meyer told jurors during Whitton’s trial that Whitton had been using drugs and was “an extremely emotionally immature” young man.