What Drove Ramirez? Penalty Hearing May Offer Clues

Moments after Richard Ramirez’s conviction in 13 serial murders, Los Angeles Homicide Detective Frank Salerno, who led the Night Stalker task force, mused: “We’ll just never know” what drove Ramirez to commit the gruesome killings.

But at least some tenuous clues as to what drove Ramirez may begin to emerge when the trial’s penalty phase starts Wednesday.

It is during this stage of a death penalty trial when defense lawyers usually call sympathetic witnesses, whose testimony is intended to persuade a jury to spare the convicted person’s life. Whether that testimony includes claims of a bad childhood, a tearful family or a plea from the defendant himself, it is all meant to show what is known in legal jargon as “mitigating” circumstances.

“Unlike the guilt phase, the jury can consider pure sympathy in recommending a sentence,” said Los Angeles County Assistant Dist. Atty. Curt Livesay, who decides in which cases a death penalty is sought. “The defense has wide latitude and hardly anything is inadmissible.”

Livesay said juries recommend the gas chamber in only about a third of the cases in which the death penalty is sought here. No one has been executed in California, however, for a quarter of a century, although there are 262 inmates on San Quentin’s Death Row, 85 of them from Los Angeles County.

The more heinous the crime, the more likely the death sentence. But if recent cases are any indication, juries are unpredictable and the outcome of even highly publicized multiple murder convictions is by no means certain.

For example, Hillside Strangler Angelo Buono, convicted in 1983 of murdering nine young women and girls in the Northeast Los Angeles-Glendale area, was sentenced to life in prison without parole. Jurors, who voted after only an hour’s deliberation, refused to say why they rejected the death penalty.

However, the judge and attorneys on both sides speculated that it was because Buono’s cousin and accomplice, Kenneth Bianchi, received a life sentence through a plea bargain.

Likewise, another jury took only an hour to decide to spare the life of Brandon Tholmer, a mentally disordered sex offender convicted in 1986 of raping and killing four elderly women in the Hollywood-Silver Lake area and a prime suspect in a score of similar slayings.

Defense attorneys argued that Tholmer was borderline mentally retarded and had spent most of his life in prisons or mental institutions. Even the brother of one of his victims testified that his murdered sister would not have wanted Tholmer to be executed.

Said one juror: “He had suffered most of his life.”

Ramirez’s lawyers have steadfastly refused to disclose their strategy, but attorney Ray Clark said family members and acquaintances may testify on his behalf. During the marathon jury deliberations in the guilt phase, Ramirez’s chief counsel, Daniel V. Hernandez, spent many days in Texas, Ramirez’s home state, apparently lining up such witnesses.

Their testimony could provide new insights into Ramirez’s past. His father, Julian Ramirez, told a reporter in El Paso, Tex., on Thursday that “I don’t know if he did it or not.”

“But if he did, he didn’t do it by himself. . . . I’ve accepted he was a thief, but I’ve never accepted that he did the things they say he did,” the father said.

“The media turned him into a monster,” the elder Ramirez said. “He’s really just a poor boy who was raised to believe in God” but was led astray by drugs.

Little is known about the background of the 29-year-old devil-worshiping drifter from El Paso.

He dropped out of high school, but by his own admission has had some training as an electrician. His acquaintances in El Paso, interviewed after his arrest more than four years ago, said he was widely known in the barrios as a petty thief and drug user.

Sometime in the early 1980s, Ramirez arrived in Los Angeles and began hanging out at the downtown Greyhound Bus depot and living out of seedy hotels nearby, where he was said to have met up with assorted thieves, burglars, drug dealers and people who fenced stolen property.

Los Angeles County Deputy Dist. Attys. Phil Halpin and Alan Yochelson do not plan to present any “aggravating” circumstances during the penalty phase. Instead, they intend to simply argue to the Superior Court jury that the 13 murders and 30 other felonies “speak for themselves” in justifying a death verdict, Yochelson said.

However, prosecutors said several relatives of Ramirez’s victims--as well as at least one woman who survived his attack--have expressed their desire to speak at his sentencing.

Ramirez, who refused to remain in court for the reading of the verdicts last week, had said he wants to skip the penalty phase as well, attorneys said. That is expected to be the first issue of debate Wednesday.

The prosecution contends that Ramirez is required by law to be present unless he is disruptive, while the defense says Judge Michael A. Tynan can allow the defendant to listen through a speaker in a holding cell as he did when the verdicts were read.

Ramirez, who was dressed in jail blues and wearing ankle chains, was excused from the courtroom after Tynan cited a federal appeals court ruling last month. That ruling overturned the 1976 conviction of former Black Panther Johnny Spain because he was forced to wear chains in court and that may have prejudiced the jury against him and made it difficult for him to assist in his own defense.

Prosecutors in the Spain case have asked for a rehearing and say they are prepared to go to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Should Tynan order Ramirez to remain in court against his will, it is likely that he would be shackled, which could be considered by an appeals court to be similarly prejudicial. Conversely, his absence could be interpreted as disregard for the jury.

After hearing whatever testimony may be presented, the only decision for the jury of seven women and five men will be whether to condemn Ramirez to die in the gas chamber at San Quentin or order him imprisoned for life without parole.

If the jury deadlocks, Tynan would have to declare a mistrial of the penalty phase. That would require selection of a new jury and an exhaustive review of the evidence that led to the conviction.

To face the death penalty, a criminal defendant must not only be convicted of a first-degree murder, but a jury must also return at least one finding of a “special circumstance.”

In the Night Stalker case, Halpin and Yochelson alleged 19 special circumstances, including the commission of multiple murders, the commission or attempted commission of a burglary and the commission of assorted sex crimes. The jury agreed on each allegation.

Other special circumstances provided by state law include the murder of a judge, police officer or elected official in retaliation for the performance of their official duties; murder to prevent a witness from testifying; killing someone while lying in wait, or torturing the murder victim.

A variety of tactics have been used by the defense in other death penalty cases, with varying results:

* Billionaire Boys Club leader Joe Hunt, convicted in 1987 of the murder of Beverly Hills con man Ron Levin, was sentenced to life without parole because jurors wished him a fate worse than death.

“We decided that the death penalty was too quick,” one juror said. “Joe Hunt needs time to sit and think about the things he did.”

They said they were not influenced by the fact that Levin’s body was never found or because Hunt failed to take the stand in his own defense as his lawyer had promised. Nor were they swayed by pleas from his mother or testimony about his unhappy childhood.

* Daniel Steven Jenkins was sentenced last year to die in the gas chamber for the slaying of an off-duty police detective in front of the officer’s 6-year-old son. Jenkins acted as his own attorney and insisted on his innocence in asking the jury to spare his life.

It did not work. One juror said Jenkins’ shrewd, unremorseful arguments were his own undoing.

* Robert M. Bloom Jr., convicted in 1983 of the execution slaying of his father, stepmother and 8-year-old stepsister, also represented himself during the penalty phase, arguing for his own death and refusing to present character witnesses or other mitigating evidence.

“This is a case where justice cries out for the death penalty,” Bloom told a Los Angeles jury. “A life sentence is no deterrent. . . . If you give life, I’ll laugh all day long . . . (and) I’ll kill again in prison.”

The jury granted his wish.

* Randy Steven Kraft, a computer genius portrayed by prosecutors as perhaps the most prolific serial killer in the country, was sentenced to death last month for the gruesome murders of 16 young men in Orange County.

Despite more than 50 character witnesses who described Kraft as caring, loving and extremely bright, and psychiatric tests that showed he suffered from brain abnormalities, jurors said afterward that their choice was clear.

“He should die for what he did to all these people,” said one. “I’ve had nightmares thinking about the horror of what this man has done.”

In the event that the Ramirez jury returns a death sentence, Tynan must make a legal finding as to whether the evidence supports such a verdict. If he agrees with the jury, Tynan then would set a formal sentencing date, probably months from now, to allow time for possible psychiatric evaluations.

Death sentences are automatically appealed to the state Supreme Court. Because of the volume of evidence to be reviewed in the Ramirez case and a massive backlog of death penalty appeals, the process would be lengthy.

If the state high court eventually affirms a death penalty, the sentence can still be appealed, right up to the U.S. Supreme Court.

“This could take years, many years,” Yochelson said.