Child-Killer’s Lawyer Calls for Life Sentence

Theodore Frank, convicted of the 1978 torture murder of a 2-year-old Ventura County girl, underwent a “religious reawakening” in prison, where he also tutored inmates and became an accomplished artist, a defense attorney told a jury Monday in arguing for a life sentence for the crime.

“I will not try to excuse inexcusable conduct,” attorney Willard P. Wiksell told an Orange County Superior Court jury that is hearing a second penalty trial on whether Frank should be put to death for the brutal slaying of Amy Sue Seitz eight years ago.

Wiksell, who postponed opening statements for the defense when the trial began last month, told the jurors Monday that Frank, 51, is a “bright, articulate and a sensitive person.”

‘An Impulsive Disorder’

But, Wiksell added, Frank is a sex offender with a compulsion to molest children and he should spend the rest of his life in prison. “It is an impulsive disorder he cannot control.

“His crimes are not crimes of free choice,” Wiksell said. “He should spend the rest of his life in a cell in the (state) Department of Corrections.”

In 1979, Frank was sentenced to die in the gas chamber for the March 14, 1978, slaying. Last year, the California Supreme Court upheld his conviction, but his death sentence was overturned on the grounds that prosecutors should not have been allowed to introduce into evidence Frank’s personal diaries written while he was in Atascadero State Hospital between 1974 and 1978. The diaries explained how he liked to torture young children.

The decision required a new penalty phase in the trial to determine whether Frank should again be sentenced to death or to life without possibility of parole.

Focal Point in Ouster

Frank’s death penalty reversal became a focal point in the successful campaign to oust Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird and two other state Supreme Court justices in last November’s election.

In the retrial of the penalty phase, which began Dec. 15, Ventura County Deputy Dist. Atty. Thomas J. Hutchins has not used the diaries, but instead has called to testify as witnesses people Frank was previously accused of molesting or assaulting.

Defense lawyer Wiksell said Monday that in presenting his defense of Frank, he will introduce evidence to show that a woman who identified Frank in a lineup in connection with the Seitz case was not absolutely convinced that he was the man who approached her 4-year-old son in an alley and was walking away with him just a short time before the 2-year-old Seitz girl was abducted.

Wiksell said Frank has become an extremely talented artist and would call an expert to testify about the quality of his art. “He has benefited a lot of people,” Wiksell said of Frank. “He taught other inmates to read and write.”

‘Religious Reawakening’

Wiksell said Frank, who was raised as a Catholic, once spent eight months in a monastery studying to become a monk.

Since Frank’s imprisonment in the Seitz murder, Wiksell said, “He has undergone a religious reawakening.”

Although the murder was committed in Ventura County, the case was originally tried in Orange County on a change of venue. The penalty trial was returned to the county courthouse in Santa Ana after last year’s Supreme Court reversal.