Judge Grants New Delay in McMartin School Trial

The trial in the unpredictable McMartin Pre-School molestation case, which had been scheduled to begin today, has been postponed again to give defense attorneys more time to question prosecutors and investigators about alleged mishandling of evidence by the district attorney’s office.

And still another delay was forecast Friday, when defense attorney Daniel Davis informed Los Angeles Superior Court Judge William Pounders that he intends to ask for a change-of-venue hearing to argue that his client, Ray Buckey, cannot get a fair trial in Los Angeles County because of publicity.

At the current hearing, which began Dec. 15, the defense is seeking dismissal of some or all of the 101 charges of child molestation and conspiracy that remain against Buckey, 28, and his mother, Peggy McMartin Buckey, 60, and to have the district attorney’s office taken off the case.

Defense attorneys submitted long arguments to Pounders about why he should throw out the case. After reviewing them, the judge agreed to hear testimony on two issues: whether evidence that the defense was entitled to see was suppressed by prosecutors and whether Los Angeles Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner’s decision to prosecute the Buckeys is discriminatory, since the defense contends that the evidence against them is no stronger than evidence in the cases of five other defendants, against whom charges were dropped last year.

Trial Expected

Although dismissal of the charges is among several sanctions Pounders could order if he finds either of the defense’s allegations to be true, both sides have said outside the courtroom that they expect the case to go to trial soon, perhaps with one count dropped.

Thus far in the hearing, attention has been focused on allegations made by one parent and on what the prosecution did with information it had about her and her child.

That parent, Judy Johnson, filed the first police complaint against Ray Buckey in the fall of 1983. Her testimony at the preliminary hearing supported one molestation count involving her son, who was 2 1/2 at the time of the alleged crime. It was corroborated by testimony from a County Jail informant and a medical report by a physician who had examined the boy. The child did not testify.

Johnson, who had been subpoenaed to testify at the present hearing, was found dead in her Manhattan Beach home Dec. 19. Although a final report has not been done, the county coroner’s office has said her death was attributable to liver disease.

The defense claims that prosecutors intentionally withheld police reports and investigators’ notes that would have demonstrated “the wild, unbelieveable, bizarre fantasies of a woman who might not have been mentally fit” because they feared that such evidence would jeopardize the case.

The evidence includes reports of conversations with Johnson in which she claimed that her child had been molested by his father, by an AWOL Marine and by a member of the Los Angeles school board and that McMartin teachers had tortured him during strange rituals.

Testimony so far, however, has provided an incomplete picture of how prosecutors handled evidence to which the defense was entitled.

The chief prosecutor, Deputy Dist. Atty. Lael Rubin, responded to all questions and denied any wrongdoing. She said she was unaware of some of the reports until recently.

Former prosecutor Glenn Stevens, whose allegations of wrongdoing by fellow prosecutors precipitated the defense motion and subsequent hearing, was tight-lipped, refusing to answer questions on grounds that he has a constitutional right against self-incrimination. (The judge is considering offering him immunity from prosecution to obtain his testimony).

Deputy Dist. Atty. Christine Johnston, a prosecutor on the case with Rubin and Stevens throughout the preliminary hearing, is expected to testify this week. Other witnesses will include Deputy Dist. Atty. Eleanor Barrett, who was assigned to the case when it went to a county grand jury in the spring of 1984; Bill Brunetti, chief McMartin investigator for the district attorney’s office, and Manhattan Beach Police Detective Jane Hoag, who handled the initial investigation.

‘Better Grab It’

The case, which began with the 1983 arrest of Ray Buckey, has involved a large and changing cast of lawyers and a host of unexpected developments, including the deaths of several people who might have shed light on what happened at the McMartin school--several former McMartin teachers, an uncharged suspect in the case and, most recently, Judy Johnson.

“So much of what I expected to see is disappearing,” Pounders said last week. “We’d better grab it while we can (and get on with the hearing).”

In recent weeks the defense has focused on information relating to Johnson’s mental problems that it says prosecutors turned over late, if ever.

Rubin, during four days on the stand, admitted that she had deliberately delayed giving one piece of evidence to the defense--a March, 1984, report that Johnson had also said a Los Angeles Unified school board member had molested her son.

Rubin said she had told her colleagues she wanted “a few days to give some thought to what impact that information would have on a public figure.” However, she testified, the report got lost in the shuffle of multiple prosecutors and more pressing concerns and was not given to the defense until May, 1985, more than a year later and well after the preliminary hearing had begun.

But Rubin denied withholding--or telling anyone else to withhold--other pieces of information the defense claims were suppressed. She noted that Stevens had been in charge of collecting “discovery” materials and making sure that they were sent to the defense. She also said that Johnson was one of several witnesses Stevens had been assigned to interview, prepare and examine in court.

Key Documents

Stevens, in 90 minutes on the witness stand Friday, refused to answer any questions relating to the McMartin case or the role he played in it, including what he knew about Johnson and whether he was in contact with her shortly before her death.

Stevens and Rubin were questioned about two key documents. One is a handwritten report dated Feb. 22, 1984, of an investigator’s interview with Johnson in which she made allegations. It says her child reported flying in an airplane, going to an armory with McMartin teachers for rituals involving a goat-man and uniformed people and being taken to a church where Peggy Buckey drilled him under the armpits and Ray Buckey flew in the air. The defense says it got that report two years later, last June.

A second document at issue is a two-page handwritten statement from Johnson that speaks of witches pictured in a newspaper advertisement, a claim that the teachers put staples in her child’s ears, nipples and tongue and scissors in his eyes, an encounter with a lion and an elephant and a ritual involving human sacrifice and drinking a baby’s blood.

The defense claims that the prosecution never turned over that report, but instead supplied a summary several months later that failed to mention that Johnson had implicated people other than the defendants. A copy of the summary found in Manhattan Beach police files has a typewritten note attached that reads, “Confidential information, not to be relayed to defense in the McMartin 7 trial, per DA Rubin. Involves ongoing investigation.”

Order Denied

Rubin testified that she never gave such an order and said the note may have been a detective’s shorthand way of labeling items Rubin had advised might not have to be turned over to the defense, but which the police agency needed to discuss with the McMartin judge. The detective is expected to testify eventually, but has just undergone major surgery and is unable to do so at present.

The reports are important, the defense claims, because they show Johnson’s mental state. And if it were not for her, the defense claims, there would have been no McMartin case.

The defense also says it has recently received other material that contains new information, such as a police report indicating that Johnson’s child had been unable to identify Ray Buckey in a police photo lineup.

But prosecutors and former defense attorneys on the case say, and the preliminary hearing transcript itself indicates, that the defense knew about the lineup and had information about Johnson’s bizarre allegations and mental problems early in the proceedings, even if it did not have the specific pieces of paper in question.

Pounders has become increasingly impatient with the pace of the proceedings and agreed with prosecutors that the questioning had been “going on ad nauseam.”

“I know it is, and I do want to terminate it at some point. But I don’t think we’ve reached that point,” the judge said last week. “I’m allowing Mr. Davis (defense attorney Daniel Davis) a great deal of leeway with Ms. Rubin because she was in charge of the case for so long and so many of the allegations are against her.”

No ‘Make or Break’

Pounders also agreed with Deputy Dist. Atty. Harry Sondheim (an attorney from the district attorney’s appellate section who is participating in this phase of the case) who objected to descriptions of Johnson as “the cornerstone” or “linchpin” of the case.

“She is certainly an important witness, but not necessarily a critical witness,” Pounders said. “She is not the make or break of the case.”

Sondheim likened Johnson to “a key” used to open the McMartin school, rather than to the cornerstone of the case. “Once that door opened, the public had a chance to see what was inside” as revealed during the preliminary hearing, he said. “The defense seeks to close the door with the same key, to not look inside anymore. But we’ve (already) looked.”

He noted that Johnson’s testimony supports the single count involving her own child “but has nothing to do with the other 99 counts involving 13 other children, 11 other families.”