Newport Beach Developer to Be Retried in Slaying of Ex-Employee

Newport Beach developer James Hood will be retried July 17 on charges that he murdered an ex-employee who had been acquitted of killing Hood’s wife, a judge ruled Friday in San Bernardino.

Last month, after a 41-day trial and four weeks of deliberations, a San Bernardino County Superior Court jury deadlocked 10 to 2 to convict Hood of murdering Bruce Beauchamp.

Prosecutors charged that Hood, 48, hired Beauchamp to kill his wife, Bonnie Hood, in her bedroom in a Northern California lodge the Hoods owned.

Beauchamp, 32, who was subsequently fired by Hood from his job as a construction superintendent, was acquitted in the killing.

But on March 2, 1992, Beauchamp was shot to death in a Fontana shopping center that Hood owned. Prosecutors said that Hood shot Beauchamp to silence him.

But Hood told police that the shooting grew out of a burglary plot in which Beauchamp and his brother-in-law were involved and that he shot Beauchamp in self-defense after an angry confrontation.

“It’s unfortunate that the case is going to be retried,” said Richard G. Rumery, one of Hood’s attorneys. “But we will continue to present evidence to the jury. It was a case of self-defense, nothing more, nothing less.”

The trial will be in San Bernardino County Superior Court.