Judge Acts to Block Revenge by Police Killer

Concerned that convicted police killer Daniel Steven Jenkins is trying to direct a conspiracy from his jail cell to retaliate against enemies, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge Monday barred Jenkins from possessing pencils or paper, making phone calls or seeing visitors aside from his lawyer.

“Mr. Jenkins has been spiriting communications out of the jail calling for retaliation” against an unnamed jail deputy and Michael Shaw, a jail inmate Jenkins claims owes him money, said Deputy Los Angeles County Counsel Gordon Trask, who represents the County Jail.

At Trask’s request, Van Nuys Superior Court Judge Judith Meisels Ashmann issued a court order that allows jail deputies to search Jenkins’ jail cell and personal papers and prevents Jenkins from receiving visitors or phone calls or possessing pencils or paper.

Ashmann also revoked the legal privileges--including use of the prison law library and the freedom to make unlimited phone calls--that Jenkins was given during the penalty phase of his trial when he was allowed to represent himself. Jurors sentenced him to death.

Further Risks

Trask said authorities are preparing a list of other persons believed to be at risk from Jenkins and will seek to have voter registration, tax assessment, motor vehicle and other public records sealed to prevent any of Jenkins’ associates from getting their addresses.

Trask refused to provide details to reporters.

Ashmann denied a request by Trask to require Jenkins’ court-appointed lawyer, Howard R. Price, to be accompanied by another person when he visits Jenkins in jail. Trask contended that seemingly innocent messages Jenkins has asked Price to deliver to associates actually contain codes directing those associates to harm Shaw and the jail deputy.

But Price vehemently objected to Ashmann that he was being “treated like a criminal” and said he was not “so stupid” as to be used for that purpose. Price said afterward that investigators are misinterpreting Jenkins’ writings and denied that a conspiracy exists.

“Everybody wants a pound of flesh from him before he goes to San Quentin,” he said.

Monday’s hearing was conducted amid tight security, which included a metal detector and a deputy who was armed with a shotgun and stationed outside the courtroom.

Jenkins was convicted July 27 of murder in the Halloween, 1985, shooting of Detective Thomas C. Williams, who had testified against Jenkins at a robbery trial.

In a sworn statement used to obtain a search warrant last month, police said they believe Jenkins has compiled a “death list” of potential victims, including the deputy district attorney who prosecuted him and several witnesses who testified against him.

Shaw, who is serving a one-year sentence in County Jail for possession of a controlled substance, was named in the warrant as a victim after he reported seeing a spiral notebook containing the alleged death list on two occasions when Jenkins’ wife, Kathy Smitham, visited him in jail.

According to the warrant, Shaw said Smitham relayed a threat to kill him, his wife or children unless Shaw paid Jenkins $65,000 from a truck hijacking the men planned. But Shaw told police that the hijacking never occurred and that he does not have the money.