Outspoken Judge McCartin Removed From Murder Trial

The outspoken judge who presided over the trial of serial killer Randy Steven Kraft was removed Monday from another highly publicized murder case for the appearance of bias.

Judge Donald A. McCartin was removed from the case of Cynthia Lynn Coffman, who is being tried in connection with the killing of a 19-year-old college student in Huntington Beach. She faces the death penalty if convicted.

Coffman, together with ex-lover James Gregory Marlowe, already faces one death sentence for another unrelated killing in San Bernardino County.

Judge John J. Ryan, supervising judge for the criminal division, took the case from McCartin’s court, where a jury had already been chosen, and transferred it to Judge Jean M. Rheinheimer.

Motions to remove a judge from a case are not uncommon, but they are infrequently granted.

Attorneys for Coffman cited comments made by McCartin during pretrial motions, which they claimed a “reasonable person” might consider prejudicial. A county attorney, representing McCartin, opposed the removal motion.

In his ruling, Ryan emphasized that he found no evidence of McCartin’s partiality. However, he said a reasonable third person might conclude that McCartin was not impartial.

Ryan said he was taking the action out of an “abundance of caution,” saying it was the “prudent” thing to do.

McCartin could not be reached for comment.

A veteran jurist, McCartin, 66, has presided over a number of well-known murder cases in his 14 years on the bench.

In a 1988 interview, he said: “I do have a short fuse. I don’t like to put a lawyer’s case on for him. But if I see that things are dragging out, I don’t mind stepping in to speed things along.”

During the Kraft trial, he scolded defense attorneys for dragging out the 11-month trial. In 1986, McCartin sentenced another man to death for killing a 12-year-old Huntington Beach girl, summarizing the defense as “hogwash.”

McCartin presided over a trial last month in which the jury recommended a second death sentence for Marlowe for the killing of Lynel Murray of Huntington Beach on Nov. 12, 1986. At the outset of the Marlowe trial, McCartin ruled in favor of a defense motion requesting separate trials for Marlowe and Coffman. In the San Bernardino trial, the couple were tried together.

One of Coffman’s lawyers, Deputy Public Defender Leonard Gumlia, said “we took no pleasure” in bringing the motion to remove the case from McCartin. “We had no choice.”

The prosecutor, Deputy Dist. Atty. Robert C. Gannon Jr., declined comment on the ruling.