Jury Holds Fate of Son Accused of Murder : Courts: Augustine Dass could face 15-year term if convicted of father’s death. Defendant says he acted in self-defense.

Augustine Dass appears the model of a gentle, devoted and patient son as he pushes his disabled mother, seated in a wheelchair, into Pomona Superior Court.

But the soft-spoken Dass, 22, is on trial for the violent Jan. 14 murder of his father, Ramesh.

That evening, father and son engaged in a deadly quarrel, authorities said. It ended with Ramesh Dass, 57, strangled, stripped of all his clothes, except undershorts and socks, and lying face down inside his blood-splattered Chevrolet van in El Monte.

During the trial that began last week, defense attorney Ted Matthews argued that his young client was the victim of yet another of his father’s violent rages.

Although Ramesh Dass presented a public face of a man of peace--a missionary trying to establish a Christian church for fellow immigrants from India--the private face he turned to his family was that of a tyrant, Matthews said.

The lawyer described the older Dass as “a man who at times was Dr. Jekyll and at times Mr. Hyde.”

That man was infuriated when his son told him he was quitting college. The young man was attacked and, in defending himself, accidentally killed his father, the attorney said.

“Ramesh Dass brought about his own death,” Matthews told jurors.

The defense scenario is backed up by Augustine’s mother, Sarojani, 61, a frail woman who is using her Temple City home as bail collateral to keep her son home during his trial to care for her. Augustine Dass bathes his mother, dresses her and even sleeps in the same room at night to watch over her, Matthews said.

“He’s everything to me. I am alone in my house,” Sarojani pleaded with authorities in May when the $100,000 bail was set.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Mike Davis tore apart the defense scenario in court. The physical evidence argues against accidental death, he said. For Ramesh Dass to die, his son had to continue strangling his father for up to two minutes after Ramesh Dass stopped fighting and lay limp, helpless and unconscious, he said.

Those two minutes are crucial. They turned the outcome of the fight into murder, Davis said.

“Clearly, he was wrong in what he did,” the prosecutor said of Augustine Dass. “I don’t think it was reasonable self-defense.”

On Wednesday, the jury began deliberations. If convicted, Augustine Dass could be sentenced to 15 years to life in prison for second-degree murder.

First-degree murder was ruled out by Superior Court Judge Holley Graham because the death did not appear to be a willful, deliberate, planned act.

Nonetheless, Matthews believes his client should spend no time in prison because of the events leading up to the evening of Jan. 14.

“That evening has no meaning, unless you understand what went before,” the defense lawyer told jurors.

According to Matthews and testimony from Dass family members, what went on before was a struggle by Ramesh Dass to make something of himself and his family, which also includes two daughters. Ten years earlier, the family immigrated to the United States. Besides his job in the Coca-Cola Co. payroll department in Los Angeles, Ramesh Dass spent countless unpaid volunteer hours providing guidance and aid to Indian parishioners at United Methodist Church in La Canada Flintridge. He hoped to start his own ministry.

He had high hopes for his family, wanting all of his children to graduate from college. But his temper spoiled that dream, the defense maintained. There was testimony that the father was violent, once breaking a stick on his wife’s arm and leaving a permanent scar, hogtying one daughter while guests were at home, and kicking his other daughter so viciously that she flew across the floor and slammed into a table.

When the daughters abandoned college for marriage to escape their father, only Augustine Dass was left, Matthews said. A poor student, he struggled to succeed but finally abandoned his studies at Cal State Los Angeles. On Jan. 14, the young man decided to confront his father with the truth and went to Pioneer Park in El Monte, where his father normally parked his van to car-pool to work.

In a later confession to El Monte Police Detective Anthony Alvarez, who testified during the trial, Augustine Dass said he climbed into his father’s van, broke the news and his father struck him with a metal steering wheel-locking device called “The Club.”

The two men fought in the back of the van until the son climbed on top of his father and held the metal bar against his neck, Augustine Dass said. When he realized he had killed his father, he tore off Ramesh Dass’ clothes and threw them in a dumpster along with the metal bar.

The young man said nothing to his mother and family members at the funeral. The murder remained a mystery to detectives.

Dass eventually ran away and lived on the streets until he was found by Monrovia police a month after the slaying and confessed.

Davis presented a simpler and less emotional scenario to the jury.

“The only record of what happened at the scene is by the defendant,” the prosecutor said outside court. “And I’m not sure there was a ‘Club’ at all.”

Police never found the alleged murder weapon, Davis said. Further, those who saw Augustine Dass the night of the murder testified that he had no bruises or cuts.

According to county Deputy Medical Examiner William Sherry, Ramesh Dass died of soft-ligature strangulation--death by use of a rope or tie. His body bore no crushed neck cartilage or larynx as would be expected if a metal bar were pressed against him.

Finally, the coroner’s official also testified that death by loss of oxygen would take between three and five minutes. But before death, a strangled person would lose consciousness in one or two minutes.

“It took an additional one to two minutes after the loss of consciousness to produce death,” Davis said. “All of that (evidence) leads to second-degree murder.”