New Intent-to-Kill Ruling Recalls Sex Slaying of Anaheim Boy

Orange County Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. James Enright remembers it as a particularly heinous crime. Benjamin Brenneman, then 12, of Anaheim was molested, sodomized, hogtied and strangled by a man to whom he had tried to sell a newspaper subscription in the summer of 1981.

As such, the trial of Robert Jackson Thompson, 39, who had a history of child molestation, was understandably filled with hours of gruesome testimony about the nature of the crimes.

But there was one crucial question--whether Thompson, now under death sentence, actually intended to kill his young victim--that made prosecutor Enright’s conviction particularly hard won.

“We spent a whole day with the pathologist to prove that the strangling could not be the result of the boy’s struggling in the (car) trunk, or rolling down a hill,” Enright said. “I had to prove that it was actually Thompson who pulled the rope that caused the boy to die.”

A Major Issue

The issue has been nothing short of monumental in California legal circles since a 1983 ruling by the Supreme Court of former Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird that says juries must find that a defendant intended to kill his victim before the criminal could be sentenced to death.

But that changed Tuesday, when the new, more conservative court held in a 6-1 decision that juries do not have to find specific intent to kill when the defendant murders someone during the commission of a felony, such as robbery, rape or burglary. With the dismissal of the Bird court’s ruling in the case of Carlos vs. Superior Court, California homicide juries, like those in other states, will no longer be told about determining whether the killing had been accidental.

And that, Enright said, makes his job and that of other California prosecutors easier.

“Suppose two guys are robbing a liquor store,” he said. “One of them waits in the car outside, and the other kills the attendant while he is inside.”

Under the 1983 decision, he said, a jury must be convinced that the killer had planned to kill the attendant when he entered the store.

Had to Talk About Killing

“In other words, unless the guy talked about killing the attendant before he went inside--let’s say with his partner--it’s almost impossible to prove that he intended to kill the attendant,” Enright said, adding:

“And from a practical point of view, as a juror, you are not going to give the death penalty if it was an accidental shooting.”

In the case of Brenneman, for example, Enright had to disprove the defense’s allegation that the boy essentially killed himself when he struggled to break free from the rope that bound his hands and feet together.

If Enright hadn’t convinced the jury that Thompson first intentionally strangled the boy, who had been soliciting subscriptions to the Orange County Register, before he stuffed him in the trunk of his car, no death penalty would have been possible.

And it was only on the second penalty trial--the first was overturned, in large part because the jury was not given the proper instruction on intention to kill--that Thompson was sentenced to die.

The Brenneman case is one of five death cases from Orange County, where intention to kill has been at issue, causing retrials and thousands of taxpayers’ dollars.

Kay Brenneman, the victim’s mother, is particularly incensed that she shares the expense of housing, clothing and feeding her son’s murderer.

“Plus (Thompson) gets special protection because nobody (in prison) likes a child molester,” the Anaheim woman said.

Hailed New Ruling

Now co-chairwoman of the county’s Crime Victims for Court Reform group, she said she is ecstatic about the Supreme Court action to overturn Carlos vs. Superior Court.

“This is what I wanted to happen from Benjamin’s death; law changes to benefit everyone,” she said. “Now we have a chance. If people are sentenced to die, they may die.”

Brenneman said she believed that overturning the Bird court’s ruling was “a sign that the Supreme Court is not going to fool with stupid technicalities.”

“They are beginning to use common sense,” she said.

Even Ron Brower, Thompson’s defense attorney through the first penalty trial, conceded that distinctions involved in determining intent to kill at times seemed absurb.

“Any rule of criminal law applied in the extreme has the possibility of becoming absurd,” Brower said. “The law (overturned Tuesday) was one that was favorable to the criminal defendant in homicide cases.”

But Brower warned that other cases are not always so clear, such as a hypothetical one where a bullet ricocheting from an 18-year-old bank robber’s gun kills someone: “Should the prosecution be allowed to seek the death penalty? Under the new law, apparently (prosecutors) could.”

Retrials or New Strategy

Although the issues involved in the Carlos vs. Superior Court decision will apparently no longer affect Robert Jackson Thompson--his appeal was heard in June by the state Supreme Court--an estimated 10 other cases within the county legal system will probably be influenced by Tuesday’s decision. In some cases, there could be retrials and in others that have not yet come to trial, legal strategy may have to be revamped.

“Whenever there is a change in the rules of the game, you have to go back and start over,” Enright said.

Although the issue of intention to kill was paramount in ordering a retrial in the case of Marcelino Ramos, who admitting killing Taco Bell employee Katerine Parrott, 20, and shooting her co-worker, Kevin Pickrell, the new proceedings that are expected to resume later this month will not now address that issue.

The jury will decide only if the shootings occurred during the course of a robbery and, if so, should Ramos be sentenced to death or to life imprisonment.

A hearing in the case scheduled to resume Wednesday was delayed until Oct. 21 because the prosecutor was out of town.