Attorney’s Performance

* I read and reread with great interest your recent article on the murder trial of former Marine Thomas Merrill (Sept. 5). I may have greater insight into this case than most.

As a member of the Orange County district attorney’s office, I became familiar with the circumstances of the crime and I knew well the prosecutor assigned to handle the trial, Jeoff Robinson. After leaving the district attorney’s office for private practice, I learned that a second suspect had been arrested in the case, Thomas Merrill, and that my new partner, Gary Pohlson, had been appointed by the court to represent Merrill. I therefore closely followed the trial as it unfolded.

Your reporters repeatedly described Pohlson’s performance during that trial as incompetent or ill-prepared. It was certainly neither. As in any serious case, Pohlson was required to make numerous difficult strategic decisions during the trial. Knowing now that Merrill was convicted, some may appear to have been correct, others not. However that is hardly a basis for concluding that at any time Pohlson’s performance was incompetent or ill-prepared. To the contrary, Pohlson spent hundreds of hours preparing Merrill’s defense and throughout the trial, to the very end, he believed that Merrill would be acquitted. That the jury voted otherwise is attributable to several factors which had nothing whatever to do with Pohlson’s preparation or legal ability.

Over the course of the past 17 years, Pohlson has repeatedly demonstrated his superb trial skill and sensitivity in the courts of Orange County as both a prosecutor and defense lawyer. For The Times to trash this man’s career in a poorly researched and superficially constructed article is beneath this newspaper’s journalistic standards. You owe Gary Pohlson an apology.

THOMAS M. GOETHALS

Laguna Hills