Judge Rejects Defense Bid to Move McMartin Trial

More than three years after charges were filed, the two remaining defendants in the McMartin Pre-School molestation case will go on trial together in Los Angeles on April 20, a Superior Court judge ruled Thursday.

Denying defense motions to move the trial to another county and to hold separate proceedings against Ray Buckey, 28, and his mother, Peggy McMartin Buckey, 60, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge William Pounders said, “I feel extremely confident that these defendants can seek a fair trial here.

“In large part, the public is as confused as I was when I came to the case--I had no opinion as to (the Buckeys’) guilt or innocence. And I think that is the status of the opinion in this community,” Pounders declared.

He ordered “500 fresh jurors” to his courtroom April 20 and predicted that the trial will take at least a year. He said he will take extra measures to insure a fair trial, for example, allowing each side 36 preemptory challenges in selecting a jury. Normally, they would have 20.

The Buckeys are charged with 101 counts of molestation and conspiracy between 1978 and 1984 involving 14 children who attended the family’s Manhattan Beach nursery school.

The defense said it will seek an appellate review of Thursday’s decision. Attorneys had argued that their case had been damaged by extensive pretrial publicity surrounding the celebrated case. But Pounders said public opinion has actually turned in their favor, citing a November television interview given by Ray Buckey in which he said that “the tide has turned.”

Pounders said “the public perception has changed” since Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner dropped charges in January, 1986, against five other defendants and described the evidence against them as “incredibly weak.”

“I’ve never seen a case in which a wave of publicity has so turned against the prosecution,” Pounders said. “(After Reiner’s remarks), it was like the Titanic taking an iceberg in its side. It caused a lot of people, myself included, to doubt the strength of the case against the remaining defendants.”

The judge said a public opinion survey and a media analysis submitted by the defense were seriously flawed, and he pointed out that having been a math major in college, he is not overawed by statistics. The survey, conducted by John McConahay, director of graduate studies at Duke University’s Institute of Policy Sciences, found that more than 9 out of 10 people who had heard of the case and had an opinion think that both Buckeys are “definitely or probably guilty.”

If the survey is accurate in its finding that 23% of its sample said they had no opinion about the Buckeys’ guilt or innocence, that would leave more than 800,000 unbiased potential jurors in a pool of 3.5 million, Pounders noted.

‘Political Impact’

However, Pounders said he is concerned about “the political impact of the case” during the 1988 campaign for district attorney and the 1990 race for attorney general. Either campaign, he noted, could involve Reiner or former Dist. Atty. Robert Philibosian, who originally brought the McMartin charges.

“But I do have great faith in the ability of any court to make sure publicity can be sequestered from the jury itself,” he said, adding that “there are many different things I plan to do” to insure a fair trial.

Outside the courtroom, Deputy Dist. Atty. Lael Rubin called Pounders’ rulings “astute and correct.”

Defense attorney Dean Gits, who represents Peggy McMartin Buckey, said he will ask an appeals court to stay the proceedings and review the decision. Should that fail, he said, “all I have left is hope, I guess--hope that if the court of appeal won’t look at this case, that we can find a jury that can somehow stand above the political pressures and the prejudice that I think is still in this county.”