Judge’s Rulings Put Night Stalker Trial Back on the Track

In two key rulings Friday, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge appears to have cleared the way for final jury selection to resume next week in the Night Stalker trial, set to begin Jan. 30.

After an unusual hearing, Judge Michael A. Tynan found that the prosecution has not systematically excluded black women from serving as jurors or alternate jurors. The allegation against Los Angeles Deputy Dist. Attys. Philip Halpin and Alan Yochelson was made by Daniel Hernandez, the lawyer for defendant Richard Ramirez.

Earlier, Tynan had ruled that there was no reason to hold a hearing on a related defense charge that the co-prosecutors had similarly discriminated against Latinos.

Similar Hearing Sought

Also on Friday, the prosecutors sought a similar hearing against Hernandez, alleging that the defense team is systematically excluding Anglos and Asians from the jury. But Tynan ruled that the prosecution cannot raise the issue, thus clearing the way for jury selection to resume Monday.

Had Tynan found any of the allegations of systematic “group bias” to be true, a mistrial would have resulted. That would have required jury selection in the serial murder trial to begin anew after almost six months of efforts.

After Tynan denied the prosecution’s attempt to challenge the way the defense team is going about choosing jurors, Yochelson said he and Halpin may consider appealing the ruling.

Yochelson said he and Halpin waited until Friday to formally accuse Hernandez of excluding Anglos and Asians from jury service because they wanted to be absolutely certain that such a pattern was occurring.

6th Black Juror Excused

As currently constituted, the jury has six Latinos and five blacks. A sixth black juror was excused for misconduct Tuesday for having said he would not condemn a Latino to die because there already are a disproportionate number of minorities on the nation’s Death Row.

The issue of “group bias” was the subject of a landmark 1978 California Supreme Court ruling that held that such systematic exclusion “violates the right to trial by a jury drawn from a representative cross-section of the community.”

In court Friday, Halpin explained in detail why the prosecution used peremptory challenges to excuse each of 14 black women.

Among those dismissed, for example, he said, were a compulsive gambler, two whom the prosecutors regarded as immature and two others who had said that they expected to hear testimony regarding Ramirez’s sanity, which is not an issue in the case.

The majority of the 14 were dismissed, Halpin said, because of their seemingly unresolved feelings toward the death penalty in general or on the prospect of having to vote specifically to condemn Ramirez to die in the gas chamber.

Hernandez urged Tynan to “look beyond” Halpin’s explanations. But Tynan called the prosecutor’s statements “a thorough analysis” of the prosecutors’ actions.

Ramirez, a Latino drifter from El Paso, Tex., is accused of murdering 13 Los Angeles County residents in a spree of nighttime residential attacks that left many others injured. Most of the alleged Night Stalker victims were Asians and Anglos. Ramirez has been held in Los Angeles County Jail since he was captured on Labor Day weekend in 1985.