Tough Law, Tough Cases : Courts: The charge of aggravated mayhem was created to punish the most gruesome violence. But proving the attacker’s state of mind makes it hard to win a conviction.

Looming above the Reginald O. Denny beating trial is the haunting and, in some ways, unexpected image of Lawrence Singleton.

Fifteen years ago, in a crime still remembered for its brutality, Singleton raped a young runaway, chopped off her forearms with an ax and dumped her into a drainage culvert to die. He was sentenced to 14 years in prison, although he was granted parole after eight years.

Singleton’s early release in 1987 sparked an outcry that helped spur the state Legislature to create a new category of crime that would ensure no criminal like Singleton would be treated as lightly again. They called the crime aggravated mayhem and made it punishable by a maximum sentence of life in prison.

The charge is now one of the most serious and complex facing Damian Monroe Williams, one of two defendants accused of beating Denny on the first day of the riots last year.

Along with attempted murder and assault, Williams is being tried on this rare charge because of an alleged attack--the throwing of a brick at Denny’s head--that prosecutors argue was intended to leave the trucker disfigured for life.

Since the creation of aggravated mayhem in 1987, only 29 people have been convicted, according to the latest statistics covering a period from 1988 through 1992.

Among the gruesome collection of cases is the blinding of a woman in an acid-throwing attack, the intentional disfigurement of a young woman’s breasts with a knife, and the biting off of a police officer’s ear.

In the Williams case, the charge is one of the most difficult to prove because it requires establishing the attacker’s state of mind--that he specifically intended to cause permanent damage through an attack intended to maim or kill.

Prosecutors have maintained that the extensive damage to Denny’s skull, the focused nature of Williams’ alleged attack and the number of other attacks before and after Denny was beaten, all clearly point to an intent to kill or permanently maim the trucker.

The defense, without conceding that Williams threw the brick, has countered by arguing that the violence of the riots was so indiscriminate and spontaneous that there could be no premeditation by Denny’s attacker. The charge also has become a key point in the defense contention that the prosecution has layered obscure charges onto Williams in a crusade to make him a scapegoat for the riots.

“They were random, chaotic acts of violence,” said Williams’ attorney, Edi M. O. Faal. “The person who attacked Denny saw others and followed suit. That thoughtless action precludes the intent necessary for attempt murder or aggravated mayhem.”

Aggravated mayhem is defined in the state Penal Code as a crime in which a person “intentionally causes permanent disability or disfigurement of another human being or deprives a human being of a limb, organ or member of his or her body.”

Prior to the law’s passage, maiming attacks were largely prosecuted through charges such as simple mayhem, assault and attempted murder.

But what became apparent to judges and prosecutors in the mid-1980s were the significant gaps in the spectrum of crime and punishment at the time.

Singleton was given the maximum 14-year sentence allowed at the time even though he was convicted of attempted murder, rape, sodomy, kidnaping and simple mayhem. Simple mayhem, at the time, carried a maximum sentence of four years.

“There were huge gaps back then,” said Stanislaus County Dist. Atty. Donald Stahl, who was the prosecutor in the Singleton case. “If he was convicted today, he’d still be in prison.”

Singleton’s parole in 1987 was grasped by legislators as a high-profile platform for the campaign to create the crime of aggravated mayhem.

But the origins of the effort trace back two years earlier with a relatively unknown case that occurred in Fresno--one so horrifying that it spurred a Superior Court judge to act.

That case provides a glimpse at the type of crime that aggravated mayhem was intended to address.

On March 29, 1985, Sherman Polk went to visit a young mother, Isabel Ybarra, whom he knew slightly. Once inside the house, Polk raped and strangled Ybarra.

Polk took the unconscious woman and apparently burned her face over a gas flame. She was left horribly disfigured, charred to the bone in spots.

“It was the most sadistic thing,” said James A. Ardaiz, the judge who presided over Polk’s trial. “He burned her face off.”

Polk was convicted of attempted murder, rape and simple mayhem. Ardaiz sentenced him to the maximum allowed at the time--38 years. “The only thing that really disturbs me is that you’re going to get out and you’re going to do it again,” Ardaiz recalled saying to Polk.

In a moment that Ardaiz has never forgotten, Polk appeared to nod his head in agreement.

After the trial was over, Ardaiz contacted state Sen. Ken Maddy (R-Fresno) about creating a law that would ensure criminals like Polk could be kept behind bars forever.

The passage of the aggravated mayhem law gave prosecutors a new tool, but it also established a strict standard that required proof of a suspect’s state of mind at the time of the crime.

“That’s the real crusher,” said Robert Pugsley, a professor of criminal law at Southwestern University School of Law. “How does one ever know what’s in somebody’s head?”

In the Denny beating, the single act of throwing a brick at the trucker can be seen as at least four different crimes--assault with a deadly weapon, simple mayhem, aggravated mayhem and attempted murder. Which crime is appropriate depends on the attacker’s intentions.

The issue of intent is crucial because aggravated mayhem and attempted murder carry possible life sentences, while assault and mayhem are punishable by a maximum of seven to eight years.

Prosecutors have maintained that establishing intent in the case is not difficult and have presented a variety of evidence to illuminate the attacker’s state of mind.

One central witness is a gas station cashier, Gabriel Quintana, who also was beaten at Florence and Normandie avenues on April 29, 1992.

Quintana testified that Williams came to his cashier’s window before the attack on Denny and said: “Today I’m going to hit and kill people.”

That sentence has been a key part of the prosecution’s claim that Williams had decided beforehand to kill and maim.

Prosecutors Janet Moore and Larry Morrison also have supported their case by bringing forward a series of victims from Florence and Normandie to show that Williams’ alleged beating of Denny was part of a pattern of violence that ran through the evening.

The extent of Denny’s severe head injuries, which prosecutors claim were primarily caused by a brick thrown at close distance by Williams, demonstrates the focused and malicious nature of his attack. In particular, they point to a dance of celebration done by Denny’s attacker after the trucker crumples to the ground.

“It did not take special expertise for Williams to realize that a full-force blow of a brick to the head was highly likely to kill, permanently disable or disfigure Reginald Denny,” prosecutors wrote in court filings.

Defense attorneys have focused much of their energy on showing that the wrong man is on trial. Williams, they say, did not attack Denny.

But they also have argued that even if Williams did throw the brick, he could not have decided on his attack beforehand given the spontaneous nature of the riots. Faal added that several people participated for only brief moments in the attack, showing that there was no concerted effort by an individual to cause permanent injury.

“This is an indiscriminate attack,” he said. “The intent must be formed before the act and you don’t see that in this case.”

The legal standards for intent in aggravated mayhem have been defined by the state Court of Appeal through two cases, which give a sense of the obscure logic involved in determining intent.

In the first case, Clistie Mae Ferrell fired a single shot at another woman, striking her in the neck and leaving her paralyzed. Ferrell was convicted of attempted murder and aggravated mayhem.

In her appeal, Ferrell proposed the novel argument that because she intended to kill her victim, she could not also be guilty of intending to maim her.

The court decided against Ferrell, saying that because she fired only one shot, her attack was “directed and controlled” and showed she “intended to both kill . . . and, if she did not die, to disable her permanently.”

In the second case, a San Francisco man named Johnson Chun Lee beat an elderly neighbor in a drunken rage, leaving him partially paralyzed.

Lee was convicted of aggravated mayhem, simple mayhem and assault. He stated in his appeal that he punched his victim three times in the head and kicked him at least twice somewhere else on his body.

The variety of blows, Lee maintained, showed that his attack was indiscriminate, thus precluding an intention to maim.

The Court of Appeal agreed and overturned Lee’s conviction.

Pugsley, of Southwest University, said the cases of Ferrell and Lee give a sense of the difficult, and, in some ways, arbitrary process of determining intent.

“It’s rough justice,” he said. “It’s all kind of a mind-reading game that in no way can be seen as scientific, but it’s the best we got.”

Beyond the legal complexities of aggravated mayhem, the charge also has been turned into a political issue by the defense.

Williams’ attorneys have said that the filing of attempted murder and aggravated mayhem charges are part of a pattern of racial discrimination in which blacks and Latinos are consistently more harshly charged than whites.

Faal asked for 14 years of documents from the prosecutor’s office and subpoenaed former Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner to ask why Williams faced more serious charges than the white LAPD officers who beat Rodney G. King.

When Reiner testified at a hearing in July, he confidently proclaimed that he “threw the book” at the Denny defendants.

“I authorized those charges because I though they were absolutely appropriate,” Reiner said at the hearing. “They accurately described the savage behavior of these defendants. The defendants were vicious. They were sadistic. They glorified in the pain and suffering of innocent people.”

Williams’ claim of discriminatory prosecution was rejected by the court, but the issue has persisted outside the courtroom, becoming a symbol of what supporters contend are the inequities of the criminal justice system.

The Law: Aggravated Mayhem “A person is guilty of aggravated mayhem when he or she unlawfully, under circumstances manifesting extreme indifference to the physical or psychological well-being of another person, intentionally causes permanent disability or disfigurement of another human being or deprives a human being of a limb, organ, or member of his or her body. For purposes of this section, it is not necessary to prove an intent to kill. Aggravated mayhem is a felony punishable by imprisonment in the state prison for life with the possibility of parole.”