Local News in Brief : Countywide : Three Judges Nominated to Step Into Kraft Trial
Three Superior Court judges were nominated Tuesday to replace Judge James K. Turner as the trial judge in the Randy Steven Kraft serial murder case.
Turner had to step down as the Kraft judge last month because of emergency heart surgery.
Presiding Judge Harmon G. Scoville--who nominated judges Jean H. Rheinheimer, C. Robert Jameson and Donald A. McCartin--said he will make his own decision on which judge to select if prosecutors and Kraft attorneys do not agree by 5 p.m. Friday.
McCartin is a veteran homicide judge. Rheinheimer recently sent Beverly Jean Ernst to prison for four years for felony child endangerment after she left her twin infants unattended in her car for five hours and they died of heat stroke. As a Municipal Court judge, Jameson last year dismissed charges against three brothers whose fight with deputies ended with the wife of one of the brothers dead.
Kraft, 42, from Long Beach, is charged with 16 murders of young men.
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