Prosecutors Seek to Retry Officer Skiles : Law enforcement: Judge to decide if he will face another manslaughter prosecution for the fatal shootings of two Compton brothers.

Prosecutors said Wednesday they will seek a second trial for a former Compton police officer charged with manslaughter after shooting two unarmed Samoan brothers 19 times when he went to investigate a domestic dispute.

The decision to retry Alfred Skiles came a day after a mistrial was declared. A Superior Court jury deadlocked 9 to 3 in favor of acquitting the officer in the deaths of Pouvi Tualaulelei, 34, and his 22-year-old brother, Itali Tualaulelei.

The prosecutors’ decision was greeted with relief by 36 chiefs who lead Los Angeles’ 12,000-member Samoan community and have struggled to calm those angered by the mistrial.

They said a rally planned for 9 a.m. today at Victoria Park in Carson and a 10 a.m. protest march outside the Compton City Hall will continue as planned. But the theme will be one of healing as well as protest.

“This is the most refreshing news we’ve heard in a long time,” said Chief Tua’au (Pele) Faletogo, chairman of the Samoan Council of Chiefs. “The community was very sad at yesterday’s court decision. Community leaders worked very hard to defuse tensions and it paid off.”

Skiles has been ordered to return to court June 1 to learn whether Superior Court Judge John Reid will set a new trial date or dismiss the case. The 12-year police veteran recently retired, contending that stress from the February, 1991, shooting and the trial left him unable to work.

His lawyer, George Franscell, accused prosecutors of deciding to retry Skiles for political reasons.

“How many times have you heard of a D.A. retrying a case where nine jurors wanted to acquit?” Franscell said Wednesday.

“I think the Rodney King case is having a tremendous effect. They’re using my client as political cannon fodder. Why would they make the announcement right now, except for the upcoming election?”

But the prosecutor in the case, Deputy Dist. Atty. Richard Healey, denied that Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner’s June 2 reelection bid was a factor in the quick decision to retry Skiles.

Healey speculated that the King case may have helped Skiles in his first trial. The three days of rioting that followed the King trial acquittals may have generated sympathy for the “hard job” that police have, he said.

“They had to disregard not only the physical evidence but also the testimony of neutral witnesses to vote not guilty,” Healey said of jurors who deliberated eight days before declaring they were hopeless deadlocked on Skiles’ voluntary manslaughter charges.

The decision to seek a retrial was welcomed at the Carson home of Julie Tualaulelei, 34, widow of Pouvi.

She had called Compton police to the home she shared with her husband and two young sons following a family dispute. Skiles was taking a report from her when the trouble broke out.

Skiles testified that he was attacked by Pouvi Tualaulelei and his brother. He said that after shooting both of them in self-defense, the brothers got up and threatened to kill him, forcing him to reload and shoot again.

“I’m the one who called for assistance in calming the situation,” Julie Tualaulelei recalled Wednesday. “My thought was policemen are peace officers.”

She said her sons Niles, 8, and Noris, 6, now cringe whenever they see a police car.

“When I step out of the house, they hang on me. They’re afraid they might lose me too,” she said.

Tualaulelei, a clerk-typist for the city of Carson who is currently on unpaid leave, said she and her sons and two teen-age daughters from a previous marriage now share a bedroom in her parents’ home. The family has lived in the United States for 13 years.

“It’s been tough. Very hard. Sometimes I feel like going back home to Samoa.”

For now, though, she is bracing herself for a new trial.

“It will be painful to testify again,” she said. “But if it takes it to do what’s right, I will do it. The way they were killed is so hard to take. One bullet is enough to stop a person.”

Tualaulelei said she took her sons aside Tuesday to tell them of the mistrial. She talked with them again Wednesday to tell them of the request for a retrial.

“When we go to the cemetery, they talk to their father. They’re finally coming around to the fact that daddy isn’t coming home.”