Jurors Who Convicted DeBeer Now Offer Help in His Fight to Avoid Deportation

Former juror Patricia de Carion thumbed through the pages of a scrapbook she is keeping for Joeri DeBeer, the young man she found guilty of killing his guardian and then setting the body on fire.

“I’m going to give it to him eventually,” she said. “I think that after all this is over, he’ll want it.”

De Carion said recently that she believes DeBeer’s “only” family--the people besides his new guardians “who really know him”--are the 12 jurors who convicted him, then urged an Orange County judge to be lenient in sentencing the native of the Netherlands.

With Joeri (pronounced U-ree) now facing a Nov. 20 deportation hearing, Paul D. Barnes, another former juror, is bent on helping the 18-year-old man they convicted five months ago avoid deportation. Barnes has been busy telephoning people in positions of power--politicians, bureaucrats, anyone, he said, “who can help Joeri remain in the United States.”

So supportive are the jurors that De Carion and her husband, Philip, owner of an Anaheim restaurant, put up DeBeer’s $5,000 bail bond in his immigration case. They also have begun a trust fund to pay for his college tuition and expenses. DeBeer now lives in Oakley, near Oakland, with Syd and Jenny Ward, his court-appointed guardians.

The unusual defendant-jury relationship first gained attention last June when jurors begged the trial judge to give DeBeer probation rather than send him to jail.

DeBeer was convicted of killing Phillip Parsons, an electrician for an international company, who met DeBeer, his mother and stepfather in Saudi Arabia. Parsons obtained the mother’s permission to bring the 13-year-old youth to the United States and sponsor him in competitive motorcycle racing. He later became DeBeer’s legal guardian.

In court, jurors learned that Parsons, a pedophile with a history of child molestations, began to “use” DeBeer sexually four to five times a week.

During the trial, DeBeer testified that he had borrowed a gun and had shot Parsons in a fit of rage on April 9, 1985, after the older man tried to molest and then choke him.

He said he put Parsons’ body in a van, drove to a remote area in Riverside County and set it afire. He then returned to Dana Point and set Parsons’ apartment on fire.

Convicted of manslaughter, arson and use of a weapon, DeBeer could have been given a 15-year prison sentence. Instead, the judge, who was swayed in part by the jurors’ emotional appeal, sentenced DeBeer to three years’ probation plus the 14 months he already had spent in Orange County Juvenile Hall. DeBeer was set free immediately.

Had to Find Him Guilty

The physical evidence was so overwhelming, jurors said, that they had to find DeBeer guilty. But mitigating circumstances in the case were also so compelling that nearly every juror has, in some form or another, remained steadfastly supportive of the young man and committed to see that DeBeer gets a break in life.

“I hope he can stay here in the United States, at least through his probation term, and then he can decide on his own what he’s going to do,” said De Carion, who talks to DeBeer at least twice a week by telephone.

“He’s getting tremendous support and guidance with the Wards,” she said.

But U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service officials do not share her sentiments. They are seeking DeBeer’s deportation because he is an alien whose student visa has expired and his criminal convictions amounted to “crimes of moral turpitude.”

What complicated DeBeer’s case was a July fishing trip he made with his criminal defense attorney, Gary Proctor, off Baja California in Mexico. When he attempted to re-enter the United States, immigration authorities discovered his student visa had expired.

He was allowed to re-enter, but was given 30 days to clear up his immigrant status. Border officials did not know about DeBeer’s convictions, nor did he volunteer that information, said INS officials.

Remains Unconvinced

David N. Ilchert, district director for the INS in San Francisco, said he remains unconvinced that the INS should be merciful in DeBeer’s case. Ilchert has been asked by DeBeer’s immigration attorney, John R. Alcorn, to drop the deportation matter.

“Compassion? What does compassion have to do if a kid was convicted of manslaughter and arson,” Ilchert said. “He burned a body, and the fact remains he committed two horrible crimes, and he was found guilty of them.”

Although Ilchert said he does have prosecutorial discretion in the case, using it “would only put off the inevitable.”

Waivers have been granted in the past for non-resident aliens who have had convictions of equal magnitude, but those were in very rare cases.

Chances for a Waiver

But if DeBeer had U.S.-born relatives living here, Ilchert said his chances for a waiver might have been improved.

DeBeer was born in Bussen, the Netherlands. His mother later divorced, remarried and moved to Saudi Arabia, where Parsons met him. He has no contact with his real father, and his stepfather has now moved to Kuwait. His mother now lives in the Netherlands.

Some public officials have decided against intervening.

“If we felt that the district director was not interpreting the law directly, we can walk in there and tell him where he’s wrong,” said Michele Patterson, an aide to U.S. Sen. Pete Wilson (R-Calif.), who was contacted by DeBeer’s guardian, Mrs. Ward, at the senator’s San Francisco office.

“He (Ilchert) can grant or defer action. But he’s choosing not to and that he’s (DeBeer) got to go. From a legal standpoint, it’s difficult to argue with that,” Patterson said.

Others, including Rep. George Miller (D-Contra Costa), are going to bat for the youth. Miller has introduced legislation that would make it possible for DeBeer to remain in the United States.

Mounting Campaign

Former juror Barnes, a bank executive, is mounting his own campaign in Southern California, but declined to reveal what, if any, progress he has made.

Orange County Supervisor Bruce Nestande, who was contacted by Barnes, said he intends to try to persuade Ilchert’s boss, INS Regional Commissioner Harold Ezell, to help.

“This is an extraordinary case, and if there is room for any discretion it should be exercised,” Nestande said.

Alcorn, DeBeer’s Irvine-based attorney, said he hopes the INS will recognize the hardships it is imposing and that it is only fair and just for a boy who really has no homeland to be allowed to stay with the Ward family.

Alcorn said he intends to argue that the INS has, in the past, allowed adults in similar situations to remain. For one thing, he criticized the INS for waiting until September to arrest DeBeer in an attempt to avoid media attention, a claim denied by INS officials.

For his part, DeBeer said he is hoping the INS will allow him to finish his education.

Attends College

He attends Diablo Valley College, a two-year community college in nearby Pleasant Hill, and is taking humanities, math, and health science courses.

In a recent telephone interview from Oakley, Debeer said he wants to finish college and study law at UC Berkeley. But the threat of deportation now clouds those plans.

“I guess I can go and live in Holland with my mother,” he said. But he hasn’t notified her of his immigration hearing because it “would only add to many pressures.”

One juror described his mother as incapable of helping her son, due to personal problems.

After she visited her son once while he was in Juvenile Hall, she failed to return to the United States and live up to her promise of attending each day of his trial.

Sounding like a typical teenager, DeBeer said he “would be bummed” if he were deported.

“If it happens, it happens. I wish I could stay here though,” he said.

Passport Seized

Since INS agents knocked on her door Sept. 30 and seized DeBeer’s passport, Jenny Ward said she has spent time in a local library studying books on immigration law.

“The real crime is the issue of moral turpitude and what happened to this child. He’s the victim,” Ward said.

She has become DeBeer’s surrogate mother, confessor and friend, and in those roles she believes the government should allow him to remain.

“What will be gained if he is deported?” she asked, her anger rising at the government’s stand. “To them, it’s black is black and white is white and there’s really no in between.”

Despite DeBeer’s age, Mrs. Ward described him as extremely shy and quiet when he first came to live with them. Parsons exerted so much control over DeBeer, she said, that Parsons had never even allowed DeBeer to go shopping.

“He didn’t know how to pick out shirts or pants,” she said.

Barnes said he believed that society failed DeBeer. Parsons had been arrested for repeated child molestations, but he was allowed to go free. Subsequently, he met DeBeer and brought him to the United States.

“I’m not a bleeding-heart liberal, but his case is extremely important,” Barnes said.

Meanwhile, De Carion said she believes the INS should focus its efforts on illegal aliens in the United States “who really need to be sent back.”

“They should leave the ones who are getting direction, being useful, going to school, and trying to lead productive lives, alone,” she said.

“They’re putting in so much time into Joeri’s case and he was brought here to the U.S. to be sexually abused and we allowed Phillip Parsons to get away with this for all these years,” she said.

Asked if her support for DeBeer might wane, De Carion said, “Never. I think of him every single day.”