Separate Trials Sought for Teens in Tay Murder Case

SANTA ANA —  Attorneys will ask a judge to separate the trials of four teen-agers accused in the brutal New Year’s Eve slaying of honor student Stuart A. Tay because the youths’ statements to police implicate one another.

Marshall Schulman, the lawyer representing Robert Chien-Nan Chan, 18, filed a sealed motion July 30 to sever the trials. Allan Stokke, attorney for Kirn Young Kim, 17, said Monday that he will file a similar motion this week, and Deputy Public Defender Denise Gragg, who represents Abraham Acosta, 16, said she will follow suit eventually.

Ronald G. Brower, attorney for Mun Bong Kang, 17, could not be reached for comment Monday.

A fifth youth, Charles Bae Choe, 17, has already pleaded guilty in Juvenile Court to first-degree murder and will be imprisoned in the California Youth Authority until he is 25. Choe has promised to testify against the other four defendants.

All five accused were students at Sunny Hills High School in Fullerton at the time of the killing, in which Tay was beaten for 20 minutes with baseball bats and a sledgehammer and then buried in Acosta’s Buena Park back yard. They each face life in prison.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Lewis Rosenblum has said he opposes separating the trials because doing so wastes time and money in the clogged justice system. But defense attorneys said the extra cost must be borne to ensure fair treatment of their clients.

“It would obviously be cheaper to try everyone at one time rather than have four separate trials but I don’t think justice should be measured in dollars and cents,” Schulman said Monday. “That’s not what our system is about.”

“Justice sometimes costs a little money,” Stokke added.

In interviews with police after they were arrested, all the suspects except Chan made statements about their own and the other youths’ involvement in the murder. Several of the teen-agers told police that Chan was responsible for the murder plot and that they only followed him because of peer pressure.