Lawyer Admits Evidence Links Client to Killing

In an unusual legal maneuver designed to protect his client from the death penalty, a defense attorney conceded Monday that evidence implicates the defendant in the slaying of an 8-year-old Northridge boy.

Deputy Public Defender Duane Dammeyer has asked Ventura County Superior Court Judge Steven Perren to exclude Gregory Scott Smith from the death penalty in the killing of Paul Bailly, whose bound and burned body was found in a field near Simi Valley on March 23.

According to California law, the death penalty applies only when a murder takes place in the course of a separate felony.

Dammeyer filed a motion Aug. 6 to have the death penalty provision removed from the criminal complaint upon which Smith’s trial is to be based. He argued that evidence from a June 4 preliminary hearing shows that Smith abducted Paul with the intent to kill him, thereby making the crime a single felony.

But Deputy Dist. Atty. Peter D. Kossoris filed a reply Aug. 17, saying that the kidnaping and the slaying were separate acts. It argues that Smith kidnaped the boy to punish him for complaining to school officials. The school had fired Smith from his job as a day-care aide in the latchkey program partly because Paul complained that Smith was picking on him, authorities said.

Smith then killed Paul to get revenge against Darby Avenue School, according to Kossoris’ brief.

Dammeyer is scheduled to argue the motion before Perren on Wednesday.

Paul Bailly disappeared March 23 after his mother dropped him off at the day-care program at Darby Avenue School in Canoga Park. Paul’s body was found several hours later in a field in the Santa Susana Knolls area in Simi Valley. Prosecutors have alleged that Smith abducted Paul, gagged him with duct tape and strangled him, then set fire to his body.

“There’s no evidence of an intent to kidnap, separate and apart from the intent to kill,” Dammeyer said. “The law requires a separate intent to kidnap, an independent purpose apart from just taking a person to a secluded area to kill them.”

Admitting that the evidence implicates Smith will not prevent his attorneys from trying to convince a jury that he is innocent, prosecutors predicted. Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. Kevin J. McGee said that Dammeyer’s motion creates “rather unusual circumstances,” forcing Smith’s attorneys to admit that evidence points to their client. But McGee said the jury will be unaware of the argument over the death penalty.