NEWS ANALYSIS : Tougher Standards Restrict Bite of Law

When Orange County sheriff’s deputies arrested six young men in the spearing of a San Clemente teen-ager last week, they booked them on suspicion of attempted murder.

But when the Orange County district attorney’s office filed formal charges three days later, the defendants were charged with felony assault, a decision that upset the victim’s family members and many others, particularly in San Clemente.

How could such a horrific crime, one in which Steve Woods, 17, was stabbed through the head with the metal rod of a paint roller, be anything other than attempted murder?

The timing didn’t help. Charges in the high-profile Orange County case were filed the same day that Los Angeles jurors returned partial verdicts in the Reginald O. Denny beating case, verdicts that included acquittals and convictions on charges much less serious than those that were filed.

But police, attorneys and legal experts noted that proving attempted murder in the Denny case proved impossible, as it likely would be in the case of Woods, and all interviewed said they supported the decision of Orange County Dist. Atty. Michael R. Capizzi to go with the lesser charges in the San Clemente case.

Sheriff’s Lt. Tom Davis, the acting police chief of San Clemente, said he agreed with the filing of assault charges, even though his deputies had booked the defendants on suspicion of attempted murder in the hours after the Friday night attack at Calafia Beach County Park.

Woods, who was injured during a melee between two groups of young people in the beach parking lot, remained comatose and in critical condition Saturday at Mission Hospital Regional Medical Center, hospital officials said.

“What we had was a violent, senseless attack where a young man was injured to the point of being near death,” Davis said. “Our job is to find the people who did that, arrest them and put them in jail.”

In both the Woods case and others, Davis added, police also are motivated by a desire to keep potentially dangerous defendants in custody. He said suspects generally are booked on the most serious potential charges in order to keep the bail as high as possible.

When it comes time to file formal charges, however, prosecutors, whose job involves proving the defendants’ guilt “beyond a reasonable doubt” in court, face a much tougher standard than the mere “probable cause” police rely upon in making an arrest.

In the Woods case, Capizzi said he and his prosecutors studied the evidence in great detail before arriving at the decision to file assault, and not attempted murder, charges. In the end, identical charges were filed against each of the six defendants: six counts each of felony assault by means of force likely to produce great bodily injury, and one count of throwing a projectile at a moving vehicle.

Juan Enriquez Alcocer, 20, and Arturo Villalobos, 20, both of San Clemente, were the adults charged. Names of the juveniles were not released because of their ages.

Capizzi said the evidence simply did not justify filing attempted murder charges, which would have required prosecutors to prove that the defendants specifically intended to kill Steve Woods by their actions.

“Outraged as we and everyone else might be, we cannot make something out of this that would not be sustainable by the evidence,” Capizzi said. “We examined this one very, very carefully and filed the most serious offense that was justified by the facts.”

Capizzi and other prosecutors have said they have not ruled out filing additional charges in the case.

In the wake of the Denny verdicts, the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office has been accused in some quarters of overcharging the two defendants, Damian Williams and Henry Watson. The critics have said the specific intent required for a conviction on attempted murder charges would have been extremely difficult to prove in the case of the Denny beating, which occurred during the 1992 Los Angeles riots.

And despite its notoriety of the Denny case, several legal experts said they do not expect the verdicts to have any significant effect on prosecutors’ decisions in charging defendants.

“The Denny case is really unique,” UCLA law professor Peter Arenella said. “It would only have applications to future cases involving prosecutions of people involved in riots triggered by unjust acquittals.”

Denny was attacked during the rioting that broke out after the acquittals of four police officers in the first trial stemming from the beating of Rodney King.

And, as he has previously, Capizzi said Friday that despite the timing, the results of the Denny trial had no effect on his office’s decision not to try the Woods case defendants on attempted murder charges.

“We strive very hard to look at these without a view toward the extraneous circumstances, just at the evidence. That’s what was done in this case.”