Second Death Penalty Seen as Costly Effort

Sitting in a visitor’s booth at Orange County Jail, convicted sex murderer James Gregory Marlow ran his fingers through his hair and let out a sigh. He said he didn’t understand why the district attorney was seeking the death penalty against him when he had already been sentenced to die in the gas chamber in another case.

“What do they want to do, kill me twice?” he asked. “I can only die once.”

Last week an Orange County jury recommended that Marlow receive the death penalty for kidnaping and killing Lynel Murray, a 19-year-old Huntington Beach woman.

Superior Court Judge Donald A. McCartin is expected to approve the jury’s recommendation July 1. If he does, Marlow, 35, will become the 331st inmate on the state’s Death Row and the sixth to receive more than one death sentence.

Orange County Dist. Atty. Michael R. Capizzi said that one reason he sought a second death penalty against Marlow was his concern that Marlow’s first conviction for killing a Redlands woman might someday be overturned.

“I think we would be remiss in our duty to just assume that everything is going to slide smoothly through the system,” Capizzi said. “He could get a reversal at any stage, and if it were years from now, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to proceed with our case once witnesses’ memories have faded” or if the witnesses “disappear or die.”

Deputy Dist. Atty. Raymond Haight, who prosecuted Marlow in San Bernardino County for killing the Redlands woman, said a second death sentence is “insurance” that Marlow goes to the gas chamber. Then “he’s dead either way,” Haight said.

But the insurance was not without its costs.

Attorneys and court officials estimate that Marlow’s Orange County case will eventually cost county taxpayers between $500,000 to $1 million, even though Marlow changed his plea to guilty early in the trial.

The tab is expected to be even greater for Marlow’s former girlfriend, Cynthia Coffman, 29, who was also sentenced to die for killing the Redlands woman. Coffman is scheduled to be tried this month for her alleged role in the Murray killing. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty in her case as well.

According to Orange County criminal courts administrator Vanda Bresnan, courtroom costs in Marlow’s trial ran about $7,000 a day, not including the costs for defense attorneys, prosecutors and investigators. Total court costs exceeded $220,000, and the defense attorney costs were more than $320,000.

Orange County Superior Court does not release investigator costs in death penalty cases until the defendant is executed or the capital punishment is dropped, Bresnan said.

In Coffman’s case, the trial is expected to take more than 70 days, with court costs alone reaching about $500,000.

Some death penalty critics and defense attorneys said that trying to get the death penalty for a defendant already condemned to die is an expensive example of how capital punishment is a flawed and unfair practice.

“It’s a costly indictment of the system,” said Michael Kroll, executive director of the Washington-based Death Penalty Information Center. “It’s saying the system is a lottery, and like all lotteries, two tickets are better than one.”

Others, such as Orange County Deputy Public Defender William Kelley, charge that it is simply a waste of taxpayers’ money.

“It’s overkill. . . . What purpose is served by getting another death sentence?” Kelley said. “I think that Mr. Capizzi, being the political animal that he is, wants to portray or convey this image that he’s Mr. Tough Guy on crime and he’s a hard core dude . . . at the expense of the taxpayers.”

Kelley has made the same complaint in the case of a murder defendant he is representing, Timothy Lee DePriest, accused of raping and killing a Fountain Valley woman.

Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty against DePriest, who is serving a life sentence plus 57 years in Missouri for sexually assaulting a woman and critically wounding a police officer.

Kelley said that he made an offer to Orange County prosecutors that would have guaranteed that his client “never got out on the streets again.” The offer was rejected, he said.

In the DePriest case, as well as in Marlow’s and Coffman’s, Capizzi said the “interests of justice far outweigh the economic concerns.” He said, however, that costs of certain trials are considered, adding “it’s a factor and we can’t ignore it.”

Capizzi denied that he was trying to get political mileage by having his office put another inmate on Death Row in San Quentin. “That’s nonsense,” he said.

Even Marlow’s attorney, George A. Peters Jr., said he “couldn’t fault the district attorney’s decision” to seek another death sentence against his client.

“There were a number of appealable issues in the first trial,” said Peters, who was once a prosecutor. “A reversal is very possible.”

Marlow and Coffman were convicted of killing Corinna Novis, 20, of Redlands during a five-day crime rampage in San Bernardino and Orange counties in November, 1986. Prosecutors alleged that Marlow and Coffman abducted Novis, sexually abused her and then killed her. The couple then kidnaped Murray at a Huntington Beach dry-cleaning store and murdered her after sexually molesting her, prosecutors allege.

Peters and others familiar with the Novis case said that one of the main problems was that Marlow and Coffman were tried together. When one defendant blames the other for the crime, as these two did, doubts can be raised over whether they received a fair trial.

Peters, however, said that a successful appeal was less likely in Coffman’s case, and that the district attorney could have saved time and money by offering her life without parole in the Orange County killing. He said that the prosecutor’s decision to seek a death sentence is risky in Coffman’s case because if the jury does not recommend the death penalty for her, her current attorney can make an appeal of the Novis case based on the presumption that her previous attorneys were incompetent.

Coffman’s present attorney, Deputy Public Defender Leonard Gumlia, declined to comment on the wisdom of the district attorney’s decision. However, he said that he “welcomed the opportunity” to prove that Coffman does not deserve to die.

But Capizzi insisted that the circumstances of Marlow’s and Coffman’s crime in Orange County warranted pursuit of the death penalty.

“The people of Orange County and the family of the victim deserve to see that the crime is redressed,” he said.

Even Marlow, looking tired and pale during a jailhouse interview last week said, “I can’t blame (the victim’s family) for wanting me punished. . . . I’ve done some evil things and I’m sorry for them. But I’m not the same man I was back then.”