Man Acquitted in Beating of Father : Verdict: Son is found not guilty of attempted murder at Leisure World. He said he mistook 77-year-old dad for an intruder.

A Connecticut man who admitted severely beating his 77-year-old father at Leisure World in Laguna Hills last year was acquitted Tuesday in Orange County Superior Court of attempted murder, mayhem and torture.

After three full days of deliberations, a jury found 44-year-old Harrison Douglas Kline not guilty of all three charges. If convicted, the Norwalk, Conn., resident would have faced a life sentence.

His father, Harry D. Kline, remains in a coma at a Tustin medical facility as a result of the Nov. 1, 1992, beating.

Kline testified during the trial that he was under the influence of alcohol and the controversial sleeping pill Halcion at the time of the attack, and that he mistook his father for an intruder.

In addition, Kline testified, he was deeply depressed at the death of his mother the day before, and was under stress because of his wife’s cancer surgery earlier that week.

By remaining by his wife’s bedside in Connecticut, he said, he was unable to be with his mother when she died in Orange County, arriving here from the East Coast the next day.

“The conscience of the community has spoken,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Thomas A. Glazier, declining further comment on the verdict.

After the verdict was announced, weeping members of Kline’s family rushed to embrace him and his attorney, Melvyn Douglas Sacks.

“It was a proper verdict,” Sacks said. “Here’s a fellow who loved his father. . . . It was just a quirk of fate that this happened.”

“I’m absolutely elated by the outcome,” Kline said, adding that “it’ll never be over. I’ll live with this for the rest of my life. At least this part is over.”

Kline said he was awakened in the family apartment around midnight when “somebody jumped in my face,” a person he mistook for a naked intruder who had frightened his mother some weeks before.

“His hair was long and spiky,” Kline testified, “and his mouth was melted and burnt and dripping like a mask, like he had a clown suit on.”

Beating the figure, Kline said, “I was totally savage, out of my mind,” leaving the elder Kline hogtied with a phone cord and laying in a pool of blood in the atrium of his home.

The father’s eyes were swollen shut and part of his ear was missing, according to court records, and his skull was split from his forehead to his neck.

The prosecution was unable to demonstrate that Kline intended to kill his father, said juror Sally Rosenblum, 52, of Garden Grove.

“They hadn’t really proved it to us,” she said.

“We weren’t shown any history of family violence,” said another juror, Albert Dernberger, 60, of Laguna Niguel. “The prosecution never proved to us that anything else existed” in the way of a motive for the beating, other than intoxication, stress and Halcion.

In the past, Halcion users have reported episodes of violent behavior, amnesia and other mental disorders since its approval for use in 1982. It has been banned in England and other European countries.