DeHoyos’ Lawyer Says Client Killed Girl : Retrial: The attorney tells jurors that the drifter’s mental illness drove him to suffocate Nadia Puente. Prosecutors are expected to raise the sanity issue later.

An attorney for accused killer Richard Lucio DeHoyos told jurors Wednesday that his client was responsible for the death of a 9-year-old Santa Ana girl, whom he lured into his car by posing as a schoolteacher in need of help carrying books.

But attorney Milton Grimes told jurors in DeHoyos’ retrial on murder, rape and kidnaping charges that experts have concluded that the 35-year-old drifter suffers from a mental illness that causes him to violently act out his impulses.

Nadia Puente was kidnaped March 20, 1989, as she walked home from school. Her body was found the next day in a trash can in Los Angeles’ Griffith Park.

“This is a very tragic situation for all parties involved,” Grimes said. He later added: “We are dealing with a man who has evidenced mental illness from infancy (and) childhood (and) teen-age years to adulthood. Things are not normal in his mind.”

Deputy Dist. Atty. Robert C. Gannon Jr. did not address DeHoyos’ mental state, either in his opening remarks to jurors or when questioned by a reporter outside the courtroom. But DeHoyos’ sanity is expected to become an issue later in the prosecution’s case.

But Gannon told jurors that moments before kidnaping Nadia, DeHoyos tried the schoolteacher ruse on another girl, who avoided him and told police about the encounter after Nadia was found dead.

After a lengthy trial in 1991, DeHoyos was convicted of the same crimes and jurors recommended the death penalty. But the verdict was thrown out by Orange County Superior Court Judge Everett W. Dickey, who found that some jurors committed misconduct. Jury selection for the current trial was also interrupted by juror misconduct.

Grimes said DeHoyos, who faces the death penalty if convicted, never intended to kill Nadia, taking her to a nearby motel only because he wanted some companionship.

DeHoyos was taking a bath in the motel room when Nadia entered and said she wanted to use the phone and be taken home, Grimes said. DeHoyos panicked and suffocated the young schoolgirl when she began screaming, Grimes said.

DeHoyos admitted holding the girl’s head under water for several minutes, but the autopsy shows that she actually suffocated from pressure upon her chest as she was bent over the side of the bathtub, officials said.

DeHoyos has admitted that he had sex with the child after she was dead, but only because he wanted to determine whether she was feigning death, said Grimes, who claimed that the irrationality of the act points out the severity of DeHoyos’ mental condition.

But Gannon told jurors that a pathologist concluded that Nadia was sexually assaulted before her death.

DeHoyos, who rampaged through the courtroom and snarled and barked like a dog during his previous trial, pleaded not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity. The unusual plea means that if jurors determine that DeHoyos is guilty, they must then make a separate determination on whether he is sane.

Grimes also told jurors that DeHoyos had suffered several head injuries while growing up. He said DeHoyos had also been subjected to physical and psychological abuse from his mother, who believed that something was “wrong” with her son and routinely took him to a “witch doctor” of sorts in Mexico for a “cure.”