Jury Votes Death for Night Stalker Ramirez

After four days of deliberations, jurors recommended on Wednesday that Texas drifter Richard Ramirez be sentenced to death for the Night Stalker murders, a rampage of savage, Satanic-tinged slayings that haunted Southern California in the summer of 1985.

“We the jury . . . fix the penalty therefor at death,” Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Michael A. Tynan read aloud 19 times, the number of special circumstances attached to felony convictions that included multiple murders, burglary and sex crimes.

Spectators gasped as the first death penalty was recommended.

2 Alternatives Available

The solemn-faced jury was the same panel that last month found Ramirez guilty of 13 murders and 30 other felonies. The only alternatives available to the panel were death or life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Deliberations had begun after both prosecution and defense declined to present witnesses in the so-called penalty phase of the trial. Ramirez’s lawyers had pleaded with the jurors to “show mercy,” while prosecutors argued that the Night Stalker should be given his “just deserts.”

Ramirez, a self-proclaimed devil worshiper, was clad in black from head to toe as he entered court to hear the sentence recommendation. He rattled his waist chains, turned several times to stare at the crammed courtroom and began rocking back and forth in his chair as Tynan repeated “death” again and again.

Afterwards, as three bailiffs escorted him from the courtroom, he managed a slight smile.

“Hey, big deal. Death always went with the territory,” the 29-year-old El Paso, Tex., native said in a husky voice as he left the downtown criminal courts building in a sheriff’s van. “I’ll see you in Disneyland.”

One woman among the group of about 30 people who gathered to watch him depart, said: “He just blew us a kiss and smiled. It was funny, he didn’t look nervous. Maybe he just accepted it.”

Formal sentencing was set for Nov. 7.

Tynan could reduce the sentence to life without possibility of parole, but is unlikely to do so given the jury’s vote for death on all counts. Death sentences automatically are appealed to the state Supreme Court, and the appeals can be advanced to the U.S. Supreme Court, resulting in years of delays. No one has been executed in California for 22 years. There are 262 inmates on Death Row in San Quentin, where the state gas chamber is located. Eighty-five of the Death Row inmates were convicted in Los Angeles County.

Courtroom spectators included sheriff’s deputy Andy Ramirez (no relation), who first handcuffed Ramirez four years ago after he was captured by East Los Angeles residents, and several survivors of his victims.

Tears streamed down the cheeks of Judith Arnold and Ellen Francis, daughters of Glendale murder victims Maxon and Lela Kneiding. When her parents’ names were read, Arnold placed her hand over her face and her shoulders heaved as she fought back sobs.

“The punishment fits the crime,” she said later. “It’s been a long, hard road.”

Prosecutors P. Philip Halpin and Alan S. Yochelson both sighed with relief that the long trial was over.

“These things (trials) are not contests,” Halpin said. “It has not been fun.”

He said he regretted not having gained more insight about Ramirez--”a twisted man but an intelligent fellow”--from the defense.

“It’s a tragedy not to see how this all happened,” Halpin said.

Defense attorney Daniel Hernandez said that “society should be saddened and sympathetic for anyone who is sent to death,” adding that that the question of whether Ramirez got a fair trial will be dealt with on appeal, which will likely be filed by a lawyer from the state public defender’s office or the California Appellate Project.

Co-counsel Ray G. Clark, who joined the defense team well into the trial, said that while homicide is a serious crime, “I could not condone taking even Hitler’s life.” He said he doesn’t know whether Ramirez is guilty or not: “I never asked.”

Jurors who spoke after the verdict expressed relief that their intense, eight-month involvement in the case was over. Some said they had suffered nightmares and spent sleepless nights over their impending decision.

They met briefly with Tynan after delivering the verdict. The judge thanked them for their work and presented them with a short letter. It praised their “extraordinary courage” and wished them “the best of everything that this life can bring to you and your families.”

Then they walked into a swarm of glaring television lights that packed the hallway, some quickly heading for the elevator and a prearranged party at the home of juror Shirley Zelaya, a postal employee. The jury had been banned from making comments to the press until after the penalty phase of the trial was concluded.

Jury foreman Felipe G. Rodriguez of El Monte, a 30-year-old city street-light installer who said he put bolts on his doors and windows while Ramirez was on the loose, said he had few qualms after finding Ramirez guilty or recommending death--although he would have liked to have heard from Ramirez himself on the witness stand.

“I feel I fulfilled my responsibility to society after his reign of terror,” he said. “It’s a just punishment. . . . As for sending a man to his death, that’s a spiritual thing I have to work out between God and myself. I feel he’s a human being that may have gotten sidetracked through his growing years and all I can say now is that he kind of wrote his own story.”

Rodriguez said the jury took 22 days to reach its guilty verdict and four days to reach a penalty verdict only because the panel thoroughly examined each count. He said after some discussion, members took a secret ballot and were generally unanimous about his guilt.

The clincher in the case against Ramirez, if there was one, was the discovery at a burglary of both an Avia shoe print that had been picked up at six other Stalker crime scenes and Ramirez’s palm print, Rodriguez said. These were detected at a Monrovia burglary and represented the only time both the shoe and a Ramirez print were found together. Ironically, he was not charged in the burglary.

However, in the penalty phase, he said the jury was split at first, with 10 favoring a death sentence and two opposed.

One of those who sympathized with Ramirez was juror Cynthia E. Haden of Glendale, a bank administrator.

“It was hard for me to give him the death penalty,” she said. “I don’t want to be responsible for someone’s murder. That’s basically what it is.”

She said she felt sorry for the serial killer, referring to him as “Rick.”

“I don’t think he’s looked at as a human being, but as a monster,” Haden said. “I wouldn’t call him a monster.”

Her feelings, however, did not in the end persuade her that Ramirez’s life should be spared. She explained: “I think he’s sane. He understands what he’s done. . . . He’ll finally be doing something right--atoning for all the deaths that he’s caused.”

Juror Alfredo Carillo, a tax collector for the state Board of Equalization, estimated that the panel took nearly 100 secret ballots on the 19 counts involving special circumstances that would open the possibility of a death sentence. The voting went quickly on the more gruesome cases, in which victims had been mutilated in various ways.

Indeed, jurors said that the brutal nature of the attacks helped dictate their decision. Testimony in the trial described horrific murders in which eyes were gouged out, throats slashed and Satanic markings left behind as taunting clues.

For juror Arthur V. Johnson, a mail carrier, the decision to condemn Ramirez to death was not difficult: “There were some doubts, but the murders were just too bizarre. We looked for some sign of mercy, but there was none. . . . How could someone commit crimes like that . . . maybe Satan will give him his reward in hell.”

Times staff writers Ashley Dunn, Charisse Jones, John H. Lee and Carol McGraw also contributed to the coverage of the sentencing of Richard Ramirez.