Further Use of Kraft’s List Attacked : Defense Says Jury Will Just Assume He Killed 8 Others

A defense lawyer argued Wednesday that the jury automatically will assume Randy Steven Kraft is guilty of eight more murders if prosecutors are allowed to introduce any new entries from his handwritten list.

“The prosecution won’t need to present any other evidence,” William J. Kopeny said. “The jurors already believe that it is a death list.”

The prosecution, which calls the list Kraft’s “score card” of his victims, was permitted to introduce 13 of its coded entries when Kraft was convicted two weeks ago of 16 Orange County murders.

Now, Deputy Dist. Atty. Bryan F. Brown wants to use more items from the list in seeking a death verdict at Kraft’s upcoming penalty hearing. They are part of the evidence he wants to use to prove Kraft committed six murders in Oregon and two in Michigan between 1980 and 1982.

Link to 45 Murders

Prosecutors have linked the 44-year-old Long Beach computer consultant to a total of 45 sex-related murders of young men, partly by connecting them to the list found in his car. But Brown has elected to introduce just the out-of-state murders--plus those for which Kraft was convicted--at the next hearing.

At a penalty phase, prosecutors are allowed to introduce into evidence other acts of violence they claim that a defendant has committed, even if he has never been convicted of those crimes. Jurors are instructed that if they are not convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant committed these acts, they are to put them out of their minds in deciding the penalty.

But because this jury is already sold on the prosecution’s theories, Kopeny argued, the mere introduction of these murders is all the prosecutor needs.

“It is totally ridiculous to assume that those jurors could put it out of their minds” in a case this unique, Kopeny argued.

Kopeny called the list “the centerpiece of the prosecution’s case” at the guilt trial. It was the key reason Kraft was convicted on every single murder in the charges, Kopeny said.

‘Unfair and Prejudicial’

The defense lawyer argued that even if Kraft’s lawyers could convince the jury that the new entries do not represent the Oregon and Michigan victims, the damage would be done. Since the jurors already believe that it is a death list, he said in his court papers, then the jurors will think that Kraft must have killed eight more people somewhere, even if it was not in Oregon and Michigan.

“It is simply unfair and prejudicial,” Kopeny stated.

Kraft, whom prosecutors say could be the most prolific serial killer in the country, shook his head Wednesday when Superior Court Judge Donald A. McCartin suggested that prosecutors were doing him a “favor” by not trying to put the entire list--with its 61 entries--into evidence.

McCartin began hearing a battery of defense motions Wednesday on issues to be settled before jurors return June 5 to hear evidence. Kopeny filed four separate motions on the issue of the so-called death list alone. Most of the other motions are aimed at preventing Brown from introducing evidence of any more murders at all.

Kopeny claims in his court papers that prosecutors are guilty of “piling on” by adding the eight new murders, since the jurors “are already convinced Mr. Kraft is a serial killer.”

“The jurors have already accepted 90% of Mr. Brown’s theories about this case,” Kopeny told the court.

The penalty phase motions will continue today, then will resume again on June 1 and 2.