Authorities Support Police Conduct, Vow to Try Boyer Again

As a jury was considering imposing the death sentence almost 5 years ago against “Halloween II” killer Richard Delmar Boyer, one juror was particularly troubled that she and her colleagues might be deliberating in vain.

Jane Brickner complained to the judge that she was “appalled” to hear how often the state Supreme Court “ignored” juries’ death sentences because of what she deemed “some little technicality.”

Brickner’s fears, while no doubt overstated, proved prescient this week as the Supreme Court threw out Boyer’s murder conviction and death sentence because it found that police had flagrantly violated his constitutional rights in obtaining his confession to the crime.

On Tuesday, a day after that startling decision, local law enforcement officials were left to grapple with what went wrong in their once-secure case against a man who was ordered to die for hacking to death an elderly couple in their Fullerton home in 1982.

Yet even as Boyer’s defense attorneys hailed the ruling as an important reaffirmation of a suspect’s rights, law enforcement officials defended the conduct of police investigators in the case and vowed to appeal the court’s decision and try Boyer again if necessary.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Ed Freeman, who prosecuted the case, said: “It’s easy for (the five majority Supreme Court justices) to sit in judgment in their antiseptic court chambers, but in the real, live world of the streets, this was great police work.

“If it weren’t for the instinct and experience of Detective (Richard) Lewis and the others in the Fullerton Police Department, we’d just have another unsolved murder on our hands,” Freeman said.

Fullerton Police Chief Philip Goehring echoed that view, saying in an interview that “the Supreme Court just isn’t seeing this case in its true light.”

Goehring said that the court’s findings of police “blunders” would prompt no procedural changes in the way his officers handles issues of suspects’ rights. On the contrary, the chief said: “If this case has to be retried, so be it. But I know we’re not in error on this one.”

Acting on a tip from the son of the victims, police went to Boyer’s El Monte home on Dec. 14, 1984, and, without arresting Boyer, asked if he would go to police headquarters for questioning.

It was at that interview that Boyer, after initial assertions of innocence, finally admitted having slashed Aileen Harbitz 19 times and her husband, Francis, 24 times. He claimed he acted in a drug-induced flashback to the horror movie “Halloween II,” re-enacting its graphic scenes of violence.

Police maintained that Boyer was informed of his right to silence and offered the confession voluntarily, telling an investigator who was about to leave the room to “come back here and sit down. . . . I can’t live with it. I did it.”

But Boyer’s attorneys, seeking to suppress the admission at his trial, argued that police intimidated and badgered Boyer into giving the statement and ignored his repeated requests to speak with a lawyer and to remain silent.

The Supreme Court agreed in its ruling Tuesday that Boyer’s constitutional rights were seriously compromised, drawing praise from defense attorneys who worked on the case.

“All along, this was clearly an illegal arrest, and this ruling reaffirms that the cops just can’t go around doing stuff like that,” said Santa Ana attorney Jeff Friedman, who represented Boyer in the early stages of the case.

James G. Merwin, who defended Boyer at his trial, added, “This decision tells me that the state Supreme Court--despite its conservative, law-and-order reputation--is intellectually honest.”

But Freeman, the prosecutor in the case, wrote the state attorney general’s office a letter Tuesday, urging it to fight the state Supreme Court decision by requesting a rehearing or appealing the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Deputy Atty. Gen. Jay M. Bloom said a decision will be made on that question in the coming weeks after consultation with Freeman and others in the Orange County district attorney’s office.

Even if prosecutors are forced to retry the case without the confession, Freeman said he believes that they have a strong case against Boyer--an assertion that was acknowledged Tuesday even by Merwin, the defense attorney.

Without the confession, Freeman said, prosecutors should still be able to convict Boyer again in the murder and gain the death penalty based on the testimony of a man who was with Boyer at about the time of the killing and on physical evidence taken from his house and elsewhere.

The Supreme Court found that this evidence--including bloodied clothing, the murder weapon and a wallet belonging to one of the victims--was obtained properly by police and should be allowed as evidence against Boyer.