Death Penalty Quest Against Triple Killer to Be Dropped : Courts: Judge will sentence 47-year-old biker to life after jurors deadlocked seven to five for execution.

Prosecutors in Orange County’s longest-running criminal case said Thursday they would drop efforts to send a convicted triple murderer to the gas chamber.

The decision means that on Oct. 7, Superior Court Judge Kathleen E. O’Leary will sentence Daniel Duffy to life in prison without parole for the 1980 slayings.

On July 10, a jury found the 47-year-old biker guilty of three counts of first-degree murder, but last week the same panel deadlocked, with seven of its 12 members recommending the death penalty. Prosecutors had the option of calling a new jury to retry the penalty phase of the trial, a proceeding that could have taken six months.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Richard M. King said “a lot factors were taken into account” in deciding against pursuing the death penalty again in the case.

King said he spent three hours talking with jurors once the case was decided and came to the conclusion that “it was not reasonably probable that a jury would unanimously vote for death in this case. . . . If we felt it was probable, we would have proceeded.”

The prosecution of Duffy was “a complex and complicated case,” which had little in the way of physical evidence and depended largely on the testimony of witnesses who had been granted immunity from criminal prosecution.

In addition, King said, jurors said there was reluctance on the part of some jurors to vote for death for Duffy “because he wasn’t the actual killer.”

The cost of a new trial was not a determining factor, the prosecutor said, but he acknowledged that a six-month penalty trial would have been “extremely expensive.”

Duffy’s defense attorney, Assistant Public Defender Michael P. Giannini, said his client “is relieved that this is over” so he can move ahead with appealing his conviction. . . . In that sense he’s happy, as well as not putting his family through it again. His major thrust today is, as it always has been, that he is innocent.”

Duffy, together with another leader of the Hessian motorcycle gang, Thomas Maniscalco, was charged with the Memorial Day killings of Richard Rizzone, 36. Also found in Rizzone’s Westminster tract home were the bodies of a woman Rizzone had met several hours earlier, Rena Miley, 19; and another friend, Thomas Monahan, 28.

Maniscalco, who police believe masterminded the attack, was tried first, in 1990 on the three first-degree murder charges. His trial lasted 17 months--making it the longest in county history--and cost the county several million dollars. After deliberating 22 days, jurors deadlocked 10-2 for conviction. Maniscalco’s retrial is scheduled for Jan. 11.

During the guilt phase of Duffy’s trial, King argued that he acted as “squad leader” the night Rizzone, Miley and Monahan were killed.

He told jurors that Maniscalco, along with Duffy and a third biker, planned to kill Rizzone--once Maniscalco’s best friend--because they thought he was skimming money from their drug and counterfeiting business.

That night, Duffy and the third biker went to Rizzone’s house to kill Rizzone. Miley--who was found nude, raped and shot to death in a bed--and Monahan were murdered because they were witnesses, the prosecutor told jurors. The third biker, the suspected triggerman, was killed in an unrelated police shooting in 1982 in Oklahoma.

In an interview last week, after the jury deadlocked on Duffy’s sentence, Giannini--who also serves as a public defender administrator--pointed out that the Duffy decision marked the third time this summer that the county public defenders office had kept clients from the gas chamber.

Another jury deadlocked 10-2 in June against the death penalty for Gregory A. Sturm, convicted of a drug-related triple murder. However, in the Sturm case, the district attorney’s office has announced its intention to retry the penalty phase.

In July, a jury recommended life without parole for Cynthia Lynn Coffman, after convicting her in the sex slaying of a Huntington Beach woman. Coffman’s boyfriend, Gregory Marlowe, received a death sentence for his role in the killing and both Coffman and Marlowe face death for their parts in an earlier, San Bernardino County sex slaying.

Giannini called the results of the penalty juries in Coffman, Sturm and Duffy a “hat trick,” “astonishing,” and a “phenomenal display” of effort.

“Our office is ecstatic,” Giannini said.

However, while Duffy “got a tremendous defense in terms of resources and quality,” King said, what saved him were the weaknesses cited by the juror in the case.