Murder Suspect Slain in Jail Fight

A 27-year-old Chino man who had been in Orange County Jail for 3 1/2 years while awaiting a death-penalty trial died Sunday of stab wounds suffered during a fight with another inmate, authorities said Monday.

Lloyd R. Green--known as “a troublemaker at the jail,” according to one of his own attorneys--died at UCI Medical Center about 6:30 p.m. Two hours earlier, a jail deputy had seen Green and a second man in a struggle and rushed to break it up, according to a spokesman for the Sheriff’s Department.

The name of the other inmate was not released Monday by sheriff’s homicide detectives investigating the incident. Investigators were unavailable for comment Monday.

Green and a co-defendant were awaiting trial on murder charges in the shooting death of Garden Grove doughnut shop owner Yong C. Sou during an attempted robbery in 1984. Green was arrested in January, 1985, and had been in the main men’s jail in Santa Ana since then because of many legal delays in the start of his trial.

Green was housed in an area of the jail called administrative segregation, which is usually reserved for inmates known to have caused problems within the jail. Although inmates are kept in individual cells in administrative segregation, prisoners are sometimes together in common areas. Officials did not specify where in the jail the stabbing occurred.

Marijuana Found in Potatoes

According to court records, jail deputies had previously found marijuana on Green in two separate incidents at the jail. Green had been overheard bragging to another inmate how easy it was to get marijuana into the jail.

In one of the incidents, the marijuana was found in a small bindle in Green’s mashed potatoes.

In the second marijuana incident, an 11-inch knife, fashioned out of a piece of mirror frame, was found buried inside his mattress, court records showed.

In another incident, Green was reportedly shot with a electric-shock gun during a confrontation with jail deputies, according to one inmate who asked not to be named.

“Lloyd was considered a troublemaker by jail officials,” said Charles Margines, one of his attorneys. “He was not naive about the jail. He had plenty of experience with jail life.”

Details of Fight Withheld

No other details about the fight between Green and the other inmate were released by jail officials Monday. Margines was unaware that his client had been killed until he was asked for comment by a Times reporter Monday afternoon.

“My gosh, this is awful,” Margines said.

One source at the jail said Green was sometimes in trouble with jail deputies because, although he was white, he strongly identified with a Latino gang in the jail that has been a problem for deputies.

Green’s co-defendant in the 1984 murder charges is Latino. Margines said that reports that he was friendly with a Latino gang are “consistent with what I knew about Lloyd.”

Margines said he thought Green’s problems were with jail deputies, not with other inmates.

Green had served an earlier prison sentence for burglarly before his arrest on murder charges in the doughnut shop robbery. Green was facing 31 felony counts involving not only the murder but a series of robberies in the area, both before and after the doughnut shop robbery.

Accused in Armed Robberies

Prosecutors had said Green and co-defendant Ronald S. Rodriguez robbed employees and patrons at gunpoint at both the Villa Mexican Restaurant in El Toro and the Carrows Restaurant in San Clemente in the two weeks before the Garden Grove killing.

The suspects were also accused of two Corona robberies earlier in the year, plus the robbery of a Carl’s Jr. restaurant in Colton two weeks after the Garden Grove killing.

Two people were beaten with a gun butt in the El Toro robbery. Those assaults were included in the death-penalty allegations against both Green and Rodriguez.

On Aug. 12, 1984--three days before the doughnut shop killing--Green and Rodriguez were arrested by Border Patrol agents at the San Onofre border checkpoint on northbound Interstate 5. Rodriguez asked a Border Patrol officer whether they were heading the right way to Disneyland, which drew suspicion and prompted an inspection of their car.

Cache of Weapons in Car

Agents found a small cache of weapons in a back compartment of the vehicle, and the two were arrested on suspicion of illegal possession of firearms. However, they were released on bail, according to Margines, shortly before the doughnut shop killing.

Green was arrested in connection with the Garden Grove killing several months later, after an anonymous caller to police implicated Green in the killing. Rodriguez was arrested a month after Green.

In a conversation with an informant, which was secretly taped by police, Green acknowledged that he had shot an Asian man during a robbery where “they were making cakes and things.” He said he shot the man only after the victim came at “Ronald” with some kind of tool.

Shop owner Sou had refused to give up money to the robbers and had reached for a mixing tool when he was first struck by one of the robbers with a tire iron, then shot by the second, according to a witness to the incident.

Trials for Green and Rodriguez had been delayed repeatedly, partly because of controversy over admissible evidence. A judge refused to let prosecutors use evidence from the Border Patrol arrest, ruling that the checkpoint search had been illegal. Prosecutors, however, took the issue to the 4th District Court of Appeal and won on Oct. 29, 1987.

Subsequently, Green’s trial was scheduled to begin in September, according to court records.

“Lloyd had said that if the case reached a penalty phase, he planned to tell the jury that he would prefer to be executed rather than face a sentence of life without parole,” Margines said.

“He was very certain that he’d rather die than live the rest of his life in prison.”

The American Civil Liberties Union, which is suing Orange County Sheriff Brad Gates over conditions at the jail, has alleged that violent incidents at the main men’s jail continue at an alarming rate, despite recent reductions in the jail’s population.

“There have been vast improvements, but the jail is still a dangerous place to live,” ACLU attorney Richard P. Herman said in a recent interview. “The fact is, the sheriff simply cannot guarantee an inmate’s safety, either from deputies or from other inmates.”