Prosecutors Drop Try for Death Penalty : Courts: But they will go for a sentence of life without parole in retrial of accused triple-murderer Thomas Maniscalco.

One day after dropping efforts to send his fellow motorcycle gang leader to the gas chamber, prosecutors said Friday they will not seek the death penalty for accused triple-murderer Thomas F. Maniscalco.

The killings, which took place on Memorial Day, 1980, in a Westminster tract house, generated the longest-running criminal case in Orange County history.

Maniscalco, 47, a lawyer and founder of the Hessians motorcycle gang, is scheduled for retrial early next year. His first trial on the murder charges, in 1990, ended when jurors deadlocked 10 to 2 for conviction. That proceeding lasted 17 months and was capped by 22 days of jury deliberations.

On Thursday, Deputy Dist. Atty. Richard M. King announced that he would not again seek the death penalty for Daniel M. Duffy, already convicted July 10 of three counts of first-degree murder in the same crime. This month, the same jury deadlocked 7 to 5 in favor of sending the 47-year-old biker to Death Row.

During both trials, prosecutors argued that Maniscalco and Duffy masterminded the killing of a fellow Hessian, 36-year-old Richard Rizzone, once Maniscalco’s best friend. Also found dead were 19-year-old Rena Miley, Rizzone’s girlfriend, and 28-year-old Thomas Monahan, his bodyguard. Miley had been raped and shot to death in bed.

*

King told Superior Court Judge Kathleen E. O’Leary Friday that the prosecution would ask the jury to consider three special circumstances, in addition to the murder counts--any one of which would send Maniscalco to prison for life without parole. That trial is set for Jan. 11.

Maniscalco, dressed in a yellow Orange County Jail jumpsuit, displayed no emotion when King informed the judge of his decision. Maniscalco and Duffy hold the record for longest stays in the jail.

“We gave it our best shot in Duffy, and it’s not reasonable to assume that we’re going to get a better result with Maniscalco,” King said in an interview. “We feel that there’s not a reasonable possibility that we’re going to get 12 jurors to agree on the death verdict of Maniscalco.”

A second factor, King said, is “the equity issue. Is it really fair not to go and pursue the death penalty on Duffy and yet pursue the death penalty on Maniscalco, when they both had relatively the same culpability? . . . Maniscalco and Duffy are involved in this pretty much equally, although the argument can be made that it was Maniscalco’s idea.”

His recommendations notwithstanding, King said, “we feel that for both defendants (death) is an appropriate punishment.”

Maniscalco’s attorney, Curt Livesay, said he was pleased by King’s decision, which he said “certainly changes the case. It’ll cause us to focus our attention now on the guilt phase and to now curtail an enormous investigation for the penalty phase. That will permit us to put a little tighter focus on the guilt phase of the case.”

Noting that it has been 12 years since the killings and eight years since Maniscalco’s arrest, Livesay said: “It’s one of those cases that has voluminous materials and is enormous in scope. The first trial of Mr. Maniscalco and the completed trial of Mr. Duffy have indicated that so much of the evidence is at best tangentially related to the charges.”

King’s decision, Livesay said, will help speed up the much-delayed trial. For example, jury selection should take less time because prospective jurors will not have to be quizzed about their feelings regarding the death penalty.