McMartin Prosecutors Refile Only 8 Undecided Counts Against Buckey

Prosecutors in the once-massive McMartin Pre-School molestation trial refiled only eight of the 13 remaining undecided counts against former teacher Ray Buckey today.

“We are unable to proceed on those (other) counts,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Pamela Ann Ferrero said of the three molestation charges and one conspiracy count. Only three of the five children tentatively scheduled to testify are willing to go forward, prosecutors said.

Three girls--including one new witness who did not testify at the first trial of Buckey and his mother, Peggy McMartin Buckey--are expected to take the stand.

The Buckeys were acquitted in January of 52 molestation counts after a three-year-long trial. But the jury deadlocked on 13 counts, all against Ray Buckey. The jurors had leaned toward acquittal but were unable to agree. After two weeks of public outcry, Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner decided to retry Buckey.

Defense attorney Danny Davis filed a motion today asking that Reiner’s office be disqualified from handling the case, claiming that the decision to retry the case was politically motivated and that Reiner is prejudiced against his client.

“It is my conviction that we need an independent, impartial, neutral and evenhanded evaluation of this case,” he said. Society, not just the defense, has become “a pawn” in the case, which has broken records for the length and cost of the criminal proceeding.

Davis also asked Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Stanley Weisberg not to drop one count which involved the boy whose allegations triggered the case nearly seven years ago. He said the move would prevent him from presenting evidence about the origins of the case.

The defense request “seems a bit strange,” said Weisberg, who is replacing Judge William R. Pounders as the trial judge. But he agreed to hear arguments this afternoon. Davis has said that the boy also implicated his own father in molestations and that his mother, who had a history of mental illness and alcoholism, accused several others before her death in 1986.

Jury selection is scheduled to begin Friday.

The case began in 1983 with the arrest of Buckey. In early 1984 he and six other teachers at his family’s Manhattan Beach nursery school were charged with hundreds of molestation counts and ordered to stand trial after a lengthy preliminary hearing. Reiner, however, proceeded against only Buckey and his mother, calling the evidence against the others “incredibly weak.”

The new trial--dramatically reduced in scope--is expected to last about six months.