Officer’s Killer Gets Life Without Parole

To the obvious distress of the slain officer’s partner, a Superior Court jury Monday recommended that Sang Nam Chinh be sentenced to life in prison without parole, rather than the death penalty, for his role in the 1984 Chinatown murder of Los Angeles policeman Duane Johnson.

Johnson’s partner, Officer Archie Nagao, who was wounded in the unsuccessful 1984 jewelry store robbery, shook his head as the verdict was read and then hurriedly left the courtroom. He was accompanied by at least two other officers.

Chinh, 22, youngest of the five men who prosecutors said planned and carried out the Dec. 19, 1984, robbery, appeared obviously relieved as he was returned to his jail cell.

“He said ‘thank you’ and he was relieved,” said his attorney, veteran deputy public defender Charles Gessler. “I think it’s an appropriate verdict. Nam Chinh should not die.”

A separate jury currently is deliberating the guilt or innocence of a co-defendant, Hau Cheong (Peter) Chan, 32, who prosecutors contend masterminded the botched robbery at the Jin Hing jewelry store. If convicted, Chan also could receive life without parole or the death penalty.

For more than a year, the Chinatown murder trial has been played out before Superior Court Judge Jean Matusinka, who will formally sentence Chinh on May 25.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Lawrence Longo convinced the jury that Chinh was guilty of murder in the deaths of Johnson and Robert Woo, 26, an accomplice in the Bamboo Lane robbery. Chinh also was convicted Feb. 3 of attempted murder in connection with wounding Nagao and Robert Lee, son of the shop’s owner. Chinh was acquitted of the murder of another accomplice, John Cheong, 33, who prosecutors believe may have started the wild shoot-out inside the tiny shop that ended in Johnson’s death.

But Gessler clearly aroused the sympathy of the six men and six women on the jury. A cadre of witnesses told of Chinh’s childhood amid the violence of Vietnam and later of his time as a barely literate farmhand whose family sent him to an uncertain future as a refugee rather than have him stay and be pressed into military service against Cambodia.

Repeatedly, Gessler portrayed Chinh as a not very bright “foot soldier” in the gang of Asian immigrants who hoped to gain $100,000 from the Jin Hing robbery.

“The fact that he was young at the time (of the robbery) and he came from a childhood in South Vietnam, that he was a refugee for sometime . . .” were important considerations during the five days the jury was deciding Chinh’s fate, said jury foreman Jorge Arellano, 43, of Lincoln Heights.

Longo said he was unable to convince the jury to vote the death penalty because Matusinka ruled against some testimony he wanted to present about how the robbery was planned.

“Had the rulings been different, I think we would have gotten death,” Longo said.

But defense attorneys, not only Chinh’s lawyer but also Howard Gillingham, who is part of Chan’s defense team, were critical of what they consider police efforts to intimidate both juries by packing the courtroom with officers the day the Chinh jury returned its guilty verdict.

After the officers left in the middle of Monday’s proceedings, Gillingham asked that all police be barred from the courtroom when the Chan jury returns its verdict. That jury has been deliberating since March 14.