Mistrial Sought After Conviction in Killing of Woman

The attorney for Kenneth Clair, who was convicted of first-degree murder in the death of a 25-year-old Santa Ana woman, asked for a mistrial Wednesday after court officials found that jurors had mistakenly been given evidence of Clair’s criminal background.

Superior Court Judge Mason L. Fenton said he would not rule on the issue until after the penalty phase of Clair’s trial, which begins Monday.

Clair was convicted Tuesday in the death of Linda Faye Rodges, a cerebral palsy victim who was found dead in her bed Nov. 15, 1984. Her child and four other children she was caring for were asleep in another room.

Clair had been arrested eight days before the killing on suspicion of burglarizing the same home. Prosecutors said he returned to the same house the day he was released from jail in the first incident.

Jurors found the murder was committed during the commission of a burglary, which allowed prosecutors to ask for the death penalty.

At the end of the prosecution’s case, the jurors were given all the prosecution evidence to look at. That evidence included a transcript of a conversation between Clair and a girlfriend. Edited out of that transcript was a reference to Clair’s previous arrests on suspicion of assault and a burglary. But inadvertently, the court clerk also sent to the jurors the unedited transcript.

“In my opinion, it’s much ado about nothing,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael A. Jacobs said. “We don’t know if the jurors even saw those references. And if they did, I doubt it could have made any difference in their verdict.”