Jury Unable to Decide Killer’s Fate : Courts: A judge declares a mistrial when the panel deadlocks in the penalty hearing of a man convicted of killing a teen-age girl.

A Santa Monica Superior Court judge declared a mistrial Wednesday in the penalty phase of the trial of a security guard convicted of the 1988 murder of a Pacific Palisades High School student on the eve of her graduation.

The mistrial gives the prosecution the option of accepting a sentence of life in prison without parole for Rodney Garmanian, 34, of Reseda, or another penalty phase trial before a new jury in an attempt to get the death penalty.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Lauren Weiss said it is unlikely prosecutors will seek another trial, but that the decision will be made by her superiors.

Judge J. L. Weisberg declared the mistrial after a majority of jurors said they believed they were hopelessly deadlocked after 10 days of deliberation.

With the exception of one alternate who replaced a juror who went into labor during deliberations, it was the same panel that convicted Garmanian Jan. 18 of the beating, attempted rape and shooting death of Teak Dyer, 18.

Earlier in the day, Weiss said she received a phone call from an anonymous juror complaining that “there were all kinds of problems in the jury room” and that some panelists had “fixed states of mind” and were not allowing others to discuss the evidence.

One juror complained that the forewoman was putting pressure on the rest of the panel. Another complained that when some wanted to discuss the issues further, “We were shouted and screamed at.”

“I thought we could be more civilized,” said a juror, who declined to be identified.

When the court polled the jurors in an attempt to find the one who made the phone call, all denied having done it.

The judge suggested it may have been a crank call, but Weiss said, “I really doubt that.”

Garmanian was an employee of Mac Guard Co. when Dyer was killed. He told police he was checking the Topa Building in Pacific Palisades when he discovered Dyer’s body at 6:45 a.m. June 2, 1988, in a women’s restroom that had to be opened with a key.

Weiss said Dyer was last seen alive sitting alone in a parked car in front of a friend’s house.

Dyer’s body, naked from the waist down, was bloodied and bruised all over, indicating she had been severely beaten, the prosecutor said. The student had been shot twice in the head and once near the heart.

Garmanian was charged in October, 1988, with trying to arrange the murders of Municipal Judge David M. Horwitz, who presided over the preliminary hearing on the murder case; Deputy Dist. Atty. Harvey Giss, the original prosecutor, and Los Angeles police officer John Rockwood, who investigated the murder.