Legal Appeal of Bizarre Murder Case Focuses on Jury Deliberations

David Kenneth Kurtzman readily admitted stabbing to death a 29-year-old drifter in a downtown park in Santa Barbara in 1985.

The question for the jury was whether to accept the prep school student’s defense that he killed in the honest but unreasonably mistaken belief that his victim was a member of a local gang that had threatened his friends.

The jurors rejected Kurtzman’s bid to win a lesser verdict of manslaughter and instead found him guilty of second-degree murder, resulting in a prison sentence of 15 years to life.

Deliberation Process

Now the case of the former Eagle Scout convicted in a bizarre killing has come before the state Supreme Court, with the focus on a little-noticed but important part of the jury deliberation process.

The outcome could affect the vast numbers of homicides and other criminal cases where juries have the option of finding a defendant guilty of a lesser offense included in the offense that is charged.

In such cases, a jury, for example, may convict a defendant for simple assault, rather than assault with a deadly weapon--or for petty theft, rather than grand theft.

At issue in the Kurtzman case, which is set for argument next month in Los Angeles, is whether a jury must acquit a defendant of the greater offense for which he is charged before considering a “lesser-included” offense.

Defense lawyers contend that by requiring the jury to first decide the murder charge, the trial judge effectively prevented the jury from considering the lesser offense of voluntary manslaughter, which carries a maximum sentence of 11 years in prison.

“We believe the judge discouraged the jury from looking at (Kurtzman’s) defense,” said the defendant’s attorney, Peter A. Dullea of Santa Barbara. “The framework for deliberations was not neutral. . . . It made the jury more likely to convict on the serious charge.”

State and local prosecutors reply that deciding the greater offense first helps ensure an orderly deliberation and prevents juries from improperly avoiding their duty.

“Such a requirement doesn’t skew the jury in any particular direction or prevent it from examining all the relevant evidence,” state Deputy Atty. Gen. David F. Glassman said. “It assures the jury will give adequate consideration to the (serious charge) and not avoid it by reaching down to decide the lesser charge.”

In August, 1985, Kurtzman, then 17, was a student at Northwestern Preparatory School, an institution that prepares applicants for the service academies. The boy shared a dormitory room with James Russell Tramel, also 17, and several other students.

According to testimony in the case, Kurtzman, Tramel and seven others formed a group called The Nine, patterned on a group featured in the motion picture “The Lords of Discipline,” and aimed among other things at supporting candidates for student offices.

One night, several members of the group were involved in a minor altercation with a local gang called the City Rockers. During the confrontation, one of the gang members reportedly kicked a student.

Some members of The Nine voiced concern that gang members were armed and might invade the dormitory. Apparently with that in mind, the next night Kurtzman, Tramel and another youth--Kurtzman with a blackened, 6-inch-long military knife--returned to the scene of the confrontation.

Kurtzman and Tramel, by now separated from the third youth, thought they saw a member of the Rockers and followed him into a downtown park before he disappeared.

Later they approached a man lying in a sleeping bag. Tramel got in front of the man and Kurtzman went to his back. The man, apparently startled, said, “No, my friend, no!” Kurtzman grabbed him, stabbed him, flipped him on his back and slit his throat.

Told Friends of Slaying

The two youths went back to the school and recounted the event to their at-first disbelieving friends. Several of them then went to the park and saw the body--and the next day they gathered up Kurtzman’s bloody knife, jeans and tennis shoes and turned them over to police.

Kurtzman was arrested and confessed to the killing of Michael Craig Stephenson, a transient Kurtzman said he mistook for a City Rocker.

Tramel also was charged and, in a separate trial, was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 15 years to life. At his trial in March, 1986, Kurtzman contended that he had made an honest but unreasonable mistake, believing that he was acting in self-defense against a member of a gang that presented a threat to him and his friends.

If jurors accepted his defense, it would have excused the existence of malice--a necessary legal element in a murder charge--and the way would have been cleared for a verdict on the lesser charge of manslaughter.

As the case went to the jury, Santa Barbara Superior Court Judge Bruce William Dodds instructed the jurors that if they were not convinced Kurtzman was guilty of first-degree murder, they could convict him of second-degree murder or voluntary manslaughter.

The jury first unanimously acquitted Kurtzman of first-degree murder--an offense that requires premeditation--and then was told to deliberate on the issue of second-degree murder.

The jurors came back to report an 8-4 split favoring acquittal on second-degree murder and asked if they could find Kurtzman guilty of voluntary manslaughter without unanimously acquitting him of the second-degree murder charge.

Judge Dodds, relying on his interpretation of a 1982 ruling by the state Supreme Court, told the jurors that they must agree on the second-degree murder charge before considering manslaughter. The next day the jury returned a verdict of guilty of second-degree murder.

A state Court of Appeal upheld the verdict, rejecting Kurtzman’s contention that the trial judge effectively “compelled and coerced” a vote for guilt on the more serious charge.

‘Hard Issues’

The appeal panel said the jury was prevented from sidestepping the “hard issues” in the case, but still was able to consider factors that might favor manslaughter over murder.

In his argument to the state Supreme Court, Kurtzman contends that the appeal court misinterpreted the 1982 decision and that requiring consideration of a greater charge before a lesser charge confuses jurors and improperly interferes with the “give and take” essential to achieving consensus.

Jurors should be able to consider the greater and lesser offenses simultaneously and without restriction, Kurtzman’s lawyers maintain.

The state public defender’s office, backing Kurtzman in a “friend of the court” brief, cited a 1985 experimental study in which two groups of people playing the role of jurors decided a case based on evidence in an actual homicide.

Of the mock jurors who began by considering the most serious charge, 75% found the defendant guilty either of first-degree murder or involuntary manslaughter, while only 25% voted for outright acquittal.

Of the jurors who began by considering the least serious charge, 87.5% voted for acquittal, while the remainder voted for guilt of only involuntary manslaughter, the study found.

“If you have the jury focus first on the most serious offense, it becomes a kind of mind-set,” state Deputy Public Defender Bruce E. Cohen said. “Jurors begin to view the evidence through the filter of that offense before they even begin to look at the lesser offense.”

Cohen argues also that when jurors are required to consider the more serious offense first, those jurors who favor a guilty verdict only on a lesser charge are put on the defensive and do not have a full opportunity to express their views.

Judge’s Instructions Supported

The state attorney general’s office, joined by the California District Attorneys Assn., defends the judge’s instructions in the Kurtzman case, saying they carried out the intent of the justices’ 1982 ruling to ensure orderly deliberations.

Allowing juries to consider lesser charges first invites only a cursory examination of the serious charges, the prosecutors contend.

Los Angeles Deputy Dist. Atty. Brent Riggs, representing the district attorneys’ association in the case, said that requiring juries to first resolve the greater charge simply reinforces “what has been the common practice in jury deliberations since California became a state.”