Justices Rule on Competency : State court: They affirm the constitutionality of a law that places the burden of proving mental incapability on the defense.

The state Supreme Court, deciding a widely debated constitutional issue, on Monday upheld the death sentence of a man convicted in three execution-style murders during a 1984 convenience store-robbery rampage in Orange County.

The court, rejecting an appeal by Teofilo Medina Jr., affirmed the constitutionality of a state law that requires defendants to shoulder the burden of proving they are mentally incompetent to stand trial.

Dissenters in the 5-2 ruling argued that it should be up to prosecutors to prove the defendant’s competence--just as they must prove beyond reasonable doubt that the accused is guilty of a crime.

Medina, now 46, claimed that as a youth he learned he was a “high priest” after a revelation in which he saw Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary. While in custody, he tried to remove a large tattoo from his stomach with lighted cigarettes and once reportedly attempted suicide. At trial, he testified that he was driven to kill by voodoo, witchcraft and black magic. Psychiatrists and psychologists who examined him were divided over whether he was competent to assist in his own defense. On a separate issue, they agreed he showed signs of mental impairment--such as paranoid schizophrenia--but was not legally insane. His trial jury found him both competent and sane.

The issue of who bears the burden of proof is an important one in any legal proceeding and can prove decisive when the accused’s competence to stand trial is a close question.

More than a dozen federal and state courts around the country have wrestled with the issue, with most concluding that the burden must fall on the prosecution to prove competence, the rest saying it is up to the defense to prove incompetence.

The state high court majority, in an opinion by Chief Justice Malcolm M. Lucas, concluded that it is constitutionally permissible to place the burden on the defendant.

Lawyers for the defense, Lucas noted, “can more readily attest” to the defendant’s inability to help prepare his case. “The (prosecution), on the other hand, has little or no access to information regarding the defendant’s relationship with his counsel, or the defendant’s actual comprehension of the nature of the criminal proceedings.”

In dissent, Justice Stanley Mosk voted to reverse Medina’s conviction and death sentence, saying that the prosecution should be required to prove the defendant’s competence beyond reasonable doubt. Justice Allen E. Broussard also dissented, but concluded that the prosecution should only be required to bear the lesser burden of proving competence by a preponderance, or greater weight, of the evidence.

State Deputy Atty. Gen. Jay M. Bloom welcomed the ruling, saying a decision placing the burden on the prosecution would have opened the way for defendants to routinely raise the question of their own competence, knowing it would be difficult to prove the contrary. Conversations between the defendant and his lawyers or psychotherapists are privileged and would not be readily obtainable by the prosecution, Bloom pointed out.

An attorney for Medina, state Deputy Public Defender Michael Pescetta, said he would ask for a rehearing before the justices and, if rejected, take the issue to the U.S. Supreme Court. “This was a case where the evidence of competence was sharply in conflict,” said Pescetta. “The jury could have gone either way.”

Medina, a Santa Ana man who has spent most of his adult life in prison, was on parole from a rape conviction in Arizona when he went on a three-week rampage in the fall of 1984, killing three young store clerks. He was convicted and sentenced to death for the murders of Horacio H. Ariza, 20, killed at a gas station and mini-mart in Santa Ana; Douglas M. Metal, 23, killed at a drive-in food store in Garden Grove; and Victor M. Rea, 20, killed at a service station in Santa Ana. All three victims were shot in the back of the head as they lay on the floor.

In a separate case, Medina was convicted and sentenced to death in Riverside County for the murder of Craig Martin, 18, an attendant at a mini-mart in Corona.