Prosecutors Again Seek Death Sentence for Doctor : Trial: The first jury deadlocked after convicting Richard Boggs of murder. His attorney says he ‘should not be placed under the guillotine again.’

Prosecutors announced Friday that they will again attempt to persuade a jury to impose a death sentence on Glendale physician Richard P. Boggs, convicted last month of murdering a stranger and then falsifying the victim’s identity in a $1-million insurance scam.

The jury that convicted the 57-year-old neurologist of first-degree murder deadlocked on his sentence, with 10 favoring the gas chamber and two voting to sentence him to life in prison without parole.

Boggs’ attorney, Dale M. Rubin, criticized the decision to select a new jury and conduct a second penalty phase hearing, saying Boggs “should not be placed under the guillotine again.”

Boggs, pasty faced from nearly two years in jail, showed no emotion when Deputy Dist. Atty. Al MacKenzie, the lead prosecutor, announced that the question of his sentence would be retried. The retrial should take six to eight weeks, attorneys say.

Rubin said that although the question of guilt or innocence will not be reconsidered, much of the evidence from the original trial will have to be presented again to acquaint the new jury with the facts of the case.

He called it a “waste of taxpayers’ money” and predicted no jury would condemn Boggs to death based on the same evidence presented at the original trial.

Rubin urged Superior Court Commissioner Florence-Marie Cooper to “sit as the 13th juror” and support his contention that the case should not be retried.

But Cooper said the law gives her no discretion in the matter. She set Sept. 13 for a hearing to set a new trial date.

The original jurors, who took less than two days to convict Boggs of murder and eight related counts of fraud and assault with a stun gun, also found that Boggs killed for financial gain and while lying in wait--two special circumstances that require a sentence of death or life without parole.

Had Cooper denied the motion for a retrial, Boggs would automatically have been sentenced to life without parole.

Boggs, who did not testify at his trail, was accused of having picked up Ellis Greene, a 32-year-old Burbank accountant, at a North Hollywood bar in April, 1988, and luring him to his office. There, Greene was subdued with a stun gun and suffocated, prosecutors said.

Boggs then summoned paramedics and misidentified Greene’s body as that of a patient, Melvin Hanson.

Hanson, a close friend of Boggs, had taken out several life insurance policies naming a third friend and accomplice, John Hawkins, as beneficiary, according to testimony at the trial.

Hawkins, Hanson’s business partner in a failing athletic clothing firm, collected on a $1-million policy and disappeared, prosecutors say. Hawkins is being sought. Hanson, now calling himself Wolfgang Von Snowden, was arrested and is awaiting trial on a charge of murder.

The scheme unraveled when an insurance company representative asked for the dead man’s thumbprint from the Department of Motor Vehicles. When the thumbprint on file was discovered not to match that of the dead man, police opened an investigation.

Five months after the murder, the body was identified as that of Greene, who had been reported missing.

Rubin suggested Friday that prosecutors are continuing to press for the death penalty in the hope that Boggs will agree to testify against Hanson in exchange for leniency.

But, Rubin said, Boggs “has nothing to say because he says he is innocent.”

Prosecutor MacKenzie declined to discuss the case.

Rubin also charged that jurors were influenced against the defendant by testimony about Boggs’ homosexual lifestyle. He said that Cooper’s decision to allow such evidence would be an issue on appeal of the conviction.