Death Sentence Is Upheld in Notorious Murder Case

The California Supreme Court, ruling in one of the most notorious capital cases in state history, upheld Thursday the death sentence of Theodore Francis Frank for the torture-murder of a 2-year-old Ventura County girl in 1978.

A previous death sentence for Frank had been overturned by the high court in a controversial 1985 decision that was cited in the successful campaign to defeat Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird in the November, 1986, election.

Frank, 55, was convicted and sentenced to die for the murder of Amy Sue Seitz of Camarillo six weeks after he had been released from Atascadero State Hospital after a 20-year history of child molestation.

Evidence indicated the girl had been kidnaped from the home of her baby-sitter, bound hand and foot, forced to drink beer, and then raped, tortured and mutilated with locking pliers before she was strangled.

The court, in an unanimous opinion by Chief Justice Malcolm M. Lucas, rejected Frank’s bid for a new trial on grounds that the judge at his penalty retrial improperly heard pleas for a death sentence from the victim’s grandmother, a leader in the campaign against Bird.

The justices also turned down Frank’s argument that the jury should not have been allowed to see photographs of the victim’s battered body. The court said there was no reasonable possibility the photographs affected the jury’s verdict.

State Deputy Public Defender Kent Barkhurst said Frank would seek a rehearing before the state high court and, if that fails, appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Frank was initially convicted and sentenced to death in 1980 in Orange County, where the case was transferred on a change of venue. Five years later, the state Supreme Court upheld Frank’s conviction--over Bird’s lone dissent--but voted 4 to 2 to reverse the death sentence. The justices found that police had improperly seized a diary that later was cited to jurors in the prosecution’s demand for a death sentence.

The writings, made by Frank when he was hospitalized years before the murder, included a passage saying: “I want to give pain to these little children. I want to molest them. I want to be sadistic. I want to harm them.”

Two years later, a penalty retrial was held--this time without evidence from the diary--and a jury again returned a verdict of death.