Man Found Guilty in Attempted Murder of Wife : Courts: Anthony L. Totten faces life imprisonment when he is sentenced Jan. 3.

A self-employed tile setter who shot and wounded his pregnant wife in the head outside her Huntington Beach doctor’s office was found guilty Tuesday of attempted murder.

Anthony L. Totten, 33, formerly of Lake Elsinore, sat motionlessly when the verdict was announced in Orange County Superior Court. He faces life imprisonment with the possibility of parole.

The eight-woman, four-man jury also found that Totten willfully, deliberately and with premeditation shot his wife with a firearm, intending to cause great bodily harm, which could increase his sentence.

After the conviction, Deputy Dist. Atty. Cher De Cant asked Superior Court Judge Everett W. Dickey to revoke Totten’s $250,000 bail because his wife, Janet Totten, fears that he will harm her. The judge refused. Sentencing was set Jan. 3.

The defendant’s mother, Gana Totten, her eyes filled with tears, said the verdict was unfair, claiming that her son’s wife shot him during the same confrontation and that “no charges were filed against her.”

When Totten turned himself in to Orange police Oct. 31, 1990, the day after the shooting, he was suffering from two bullet wounds to his right leg.

His attorney, Leonard H. McBride of Orange, said after the verdict that all the expert testimony during the monthlong trial indicated that Anthony Totten was shot by his wife with the same .22-caliber rifle that wounded her. However, police theorized that he had shot himself. Janet Totten testified that she did not shoot him.

Police said after the October, 1990, shooting that Anthony Totten had been waiting for his wife, who was five months pregnant, outside a Kaiser-Permanente clinic in the 18000 block of Beach Boulevard in Huntington Beach.

The couple--married in 1984--were divorcing and fighting over child visitation when Janet Totten obtained a court order barring him from seeing her and their two children, Melissa, 5, and Eric, 2, according to court documents. The couple’s divorce is still pending.

Police said Janet Totten was attempting to drive out of the clinic parking lot when her husband confronted her with a .22-caliber rifle. She jumped out of her car and attempted to flee into the clinic but was shot on the sidewalk outside.

Her husband fled, leaving behind the rifle and his white and blue Ford Ranger.

De Cant said Janet Totten lost hearing in her left ear as a result of the head wound. The prosecutor said the baby that she was carrying at the time of the shooting was uninjured and was born four months later.

“I was satisfied with the verdict,” De Cant said. “I think justice was done.”

When asked about the decision after only four hours of deliberation, jury forewoman DeAnna Baker of El Toro said: “The evidence spoke for itself.”

The couple, according to court documents, separated seven months before the shooting because of “constant fighting, verbal harassing and continual threats” by the husband.

In a written statement to support a temporary restraining order issued by Commissioner Richard G. Vogl in October, 1990, Janet Totten said her husband threatened her by saying he would “put my face through a wall or take my car away.”

“One of the main things he stated was that if I was standing in front of him, he would kick me in the stomach as hard as he could so I would lose the baby I’m carrying,” she said in court documents.

Times staff writer Matt Lait contributed to this report.