Murder Suspect’s No-Parole Term Reversed by Court

Warren James Bland, labeled a career criminal last year by a San Diego federal judge and ordered to prison for the rest of his life without parole, has won a reversal of his sentence from a federal appeals court.

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed Bland’s life-without-parole sentence for gun possession by a repeat felon because U.S. District Judge J. Lawrence Irving, who presided over the case, improperly told jurors that Bland was wanted for the murder of a South Pasadena girl.

The ruling, issued Wednesday by the San Francisco-based court, entitles Bland, 54, of Los Angeles, to a new trial on the gun charge, which federal prosecutors indicated Thursday they were likely to pursue. He also faces a pretrial hearing on the murder charge July 31 in Riverside County, according to Municipal Court records.

Bland had been the first prisoner in California and only the fourth in the nation to be sentenced to life without parole.

Five times during the last three decades, Bland had been released from prison, most recently in 1986. Five times, he had been rearrested for terrorizing women and children in a series of sexual assaults in Southern California.

In February, 1987, he was arrested by San Diego police and charged in the torture-murder of 7-year-old Phoebe Ho of South Pasadena, whose body was found in a Riverside County ditch. She had disappeared while walking to school in December, 1986.

Bland also has been named as a suspect in the slayings of Wendy Osborn, 14, of Placentia in Orange County, and Ruth M. Ost, 81, of San Diego.

San Diego police had been looking for Bland on the Phoebe Ho murder warrant. Officers found a gun in his car.

Bland, who had spent 21 of the previous 26 years in prison or mental institutions, was charged under a 1986 federal “career criminal” law with possession of a gun by a felon with at least three serious prior convictions. The law set maximum punishment as a no-parole life term.

During pretrial questioning and over defense objections, Irving told prospective jurors in the case about the murder warrant involving the “molestation and torture and murder of a 7-year-old girl.”

Despite Wednesday’s opinion, Bland remains in federal prison pending further court action, U.S. Atty. William Braniff said.