Kraft Case Could Become State’s Longest, Costliest

Rodger DeVaul was furious last May when an Orange County Superior Court judge granted a six-month trial delay to lawyers for Randy Steven Kraft, accused of killing 37 young men over a 12-year period. One of those 37 was DeVaul’s 20-year-old son.

“I hope you guys can sleep tonight!” the Buena Park father yelled at Kraft’s attorneys as they left the courthouse in Westminster.

In January, the same judge granted yet another postponement of the Kraft trial--to July 6--despite vigorous protests from the Orange County district attorney’s office. And he indicated he might delay it again if Kraft’s three court-appointed attorneys say it’s necessary.

At the January hearing, Judge Luis A. Cardenas spoke directly to DeVaul, who was in the courtroom again.

“I know how you feel; I apologize to you as a person,” Cardenas said. “But as a judge, I feel I have no choice.”

The Kraft murder case is the biggest criminal prosecution ever to reach Orange County’s courts. Kraft, who will turn 42 this month, stands formally accused of more serial killings than anyone in U.S. history. A computer consultant from Long Beach, he was arrested May 14, 1983, when two California Highway Patrol officers who stopped him on the San Diego Freeway in Mission Viejo for a traffic violation found a body in his car.

The ensuing investigation led to 16 formal murder charges, and prosecutors say they intend to prove during the penalty phase of Kraft’s trial that he committed 21 other homicides.

Before it is over, the Kraft case will likely cost more money and generate more paper work than any other case in the history of the county, if not the state.

And because of its magnitude, it could end up taking longer to bring to trial than any other death penalty case in the county’s history.

“If the cost of this trial isn’t far greater than any other case in this county’s history, I’ll be astonished,” Dist. Atty. Cecil Hicks said. “But we don’t determine how big a case is. The defendant does that.”

County officials say it’s difficult even to speculate on how much the Kraft case will ultimately cost taxpayers.

That is partly because Judge Cardenas has sealed all information on the costs of Kraft’s defense, including investigative and clerical expenses, lawyers’ fees and fees for expert witnesses.

Supervisor Thomas F. Riley said county employees have been able to determine only that the cost of the Kraft trial “will be in the millions of dollars.”

Last April, in an estimate for the Board of Supervisors, the district attorney’s office said defense costs up to that time totaled about $2 million. The supervisors then allocated another $310,000 a year to prosecutors to hire seven new staff people because of the burden of the Kraft case on that office.

Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. James Enright predicted recently that the Kraft case, “when it’s all over, will be the most expensive California has ever seen.” Two of Kraft’s attorneys are being paid $75 an hour each, and the third receives $50 an hour, according to Judge Cardenas. But Cardenas, who has presided at many of the pretrial hearings in the case, says other defense costs--such as computer time and investigative expenses--outstrip the attorneys’ fees.

It is clear from court hearings that the defense costs include a computer system to help Kraft’s attorneys sort out all of the evidence and the hundreds of documents related to each of the 37 deaths. And Robert R. Ogle, a criminalist hired by the defense to oversee its independent analysis of the physical evidence, disclosed at a recent hearing that a staff of five forensics experts like himself would be employed by the defense in preparation for Kraft’s trial.

Judge Cardenas acknowledges that the expense of the Kraft trial is likely to enrage the public, which is why he granted a request by Kraft’s previous attorneys to keep defense costs a secret. But he also cautions that the case will be even more costly in the long run if it is not handled correctly.

Cardenas says people impatient to see Kraft brought to trial have to understand how extraordinary the case is.

“We are all anxious to see this matter adjudicated,” Cardenas said. “But it will be even more expensive, and even harder for the victims’ families to endure, if we have to come back for a second trial because we didn’t do it right the first time.”

Cardenas has often said that “we don’t want a Juan Corona on our hands.”

Corona’s 1973 murder convictions in the deaths of 25 itinerant farm workers near Yuba City were overturned by the California Supreme Court in 1978 on grounds that he did not receive an adequate defense at his trial. He was tried and convicted again four years ago.

$4.7 Million for Retrial

The Corona case cost Sutter County $5.5 million, and $4.7 million of that was a result of the retrial, according to officials there.

Enright believes the Kraft case “will easily surpass the cost of the Corona trials.”

To give Kraft a fair trial, Cardenas said, “his lawyers have got to meticulously prepare a defense on each and every count.”

That means the defense team must familiarize itself with every bit of evidence the district attorney’s office intends to present to the jury, so that any doubt about its authenticity or significance can be shown during cross-examination. It means defense lawyers and investigators must seek out and interview witnesses who might have information about any of the killings. It means independent scientific tests must be conducted on all of the physical evidence.

It means hours and days and weeks of factual and legal research on each of the homicides involved.

Prosecutors, however, have accused Kraft’s lawyers of deliberately dragging out their trial preparation.

‘Delay, Delay, Delay’

Said Enright, angrily: “Their defense strategy is delay, delay, delay. We’ve been ready for nearly three years, for God’s sakes.”

Kraft’s attorneys, James G. Merwin, C. Thomas McDonald and William J. Kopeny, all of Santa Ana, argue that it has taken this long to prepare a defense in just 24 of the 37 killings of which Kraft is accused. At a four-day hearing in January, they argued it may be another year before they are ready for all 37.

“We think we’ve shown that we haven’t been just sitting on our hands, as the prosecution suggests,” Merwin said.

Said Deputy Dist. Atty. James P. Cloninger, the prosecution’s specialist on legal motions in the case: “We are fully aware that Mr. Kraft has to have an adequate defense. But his right to prepare should not be allowed to derail the entire judicial process. With three lawyers working on his case, 3 1/2 years should be plenty of time to prepare for trial.”

Judge Cardenas defends Kraft’s present attorneys, all of whom he appointed to the case.

“You have to understand what a massive job it is just to sort out all the information in a case like this,” Cardenas said. “We’re talking about 10,000 pieces of evidence, just for example. And I don’t know how many thousands of pages of documents.”

39,000-Page Report

The number of documents involved is mind-boggling. For example, defense lawyers said at the recent hearing that they were reviewing a 39,000-page report from a Los Angeles County task force on unsolved deaths in Southern California. The report includes some of the killings in the Kraft case.

“I counted at least 64 possible suspects mentioned in that report,” defense lawyer McDonald said from the witness stand. Clearly the defense expected to check out all of them.

Much of the Kraft attorneys’ time has been spent in the courtroom. The case already has gone to the 4th District Court of Appeal twice:

- Freedom Newspapers Inc. sued Cardenas in an attempt to force him to open the files on the defense costs. Kraft’s attorneys fought that suit and, so far, have won.

- Kraft’s attorneys attempted to force Orange County prosecutors to aid them in gathering information on the cases from other law enforcement agencies. Police in Oregon and Michigan were willing to supply information on their cases to the prosecution, but not to the defense. The defense so far has lost most of the battles on that one.

The lawyers will be back in court many more times before the trial begins. In fact, interviews with numerous sources involved in the case indicate that what is decided in court before the trial may be as important to Kraft’s fate as the trial itself.

Most Compelling Issue

The most compelling pretrial issue is whether there will be a single trial--or whether the case will be divided into as many as 16 separate trials.

Kraft’s attorneys have refused to talk about their defense strategy. But they have made no secret of their intention to ask that each murder charge be tried separately.

Prosecutors adamantly insist on one trial.

“No matter how many trials you have, you have to bring in all the murders in each case,” Enright said. “The similarities between the crimes is part of the evidence. And you’ve got to bring in the death list in every one of them anyway.”

What Enright terms the “death list” is called People’s Exhibit 25 by Kraft’s lawyers.

It is a handwritten list found in Kraft’s car when he was arrested that includes notations that prosecutors claim are a score card of his victims.

Kraft’s attorneys, well aware of its potential impact on a jury, already have asked Superior Court Judge James K. Turner, who is to preside at the trial, to declare the list inadmissible as evidence.

The issue of whether the case should be separated into several trials and the question of whether the list can be used as evidence almost assuredly will go to the Court of Appeal, no matter which way Turner rules.

Other likely pretrial matters include:

- The search-and-seizure issue. Although Kraft’s attorneys will not discuss it, they are expected to ask Turner to rule that three separate searches of Kraft’s house and a search of his car were illegal, even though they were conducted under the authority of search warrants. Much of the evidence against Kraft, including the disputed list, was gathered during these searches, and if they were found to be illegal, key information could not be presented to the jury.

- Evidence of the 21 homicides with which Kraft has not been charged. While prosecutors have filed notice that they intend to prove during the penalty phase of Kraft’s trial that he committed these killings, they have refused to say that the murders won’t be brought up during the guilt phase. Defense attorneys are expected to seek a court order ensuring that none of those cases will be raised before the penalty phase.

- Change of venue. While one of Kraft’s first attorneys spent much of his time preparing a change-of-venue motion that eventually was denied, Kraft’s present attorneys have not pursued a change of venue. But neither have they have ruled out that possibility, and lawyers familiar with the case expect a change of venue to be sought before the trial.

Rodger James DeVaul Sr. whose son Rodger Jr. was found dead four years ago, continues to be frustrated by the delays, but he long ago got over any personal anger he had felt toward the defense attorneys.

“I know they are just doing their job,” DeVaul said outside Cardenas’ court. “But at some point the system has got to answer to the families of these 37 young boys. It’s unfair to make us wait forever.”