Rape Suspect’s Murder Trial Tests Legal Limits : Law: Prosecutors allege attack triggered depression and post-traumatic stress that led to woman’s death one month after assault. Trial starts today.

Mary Ward was 79, active in her church and helping to manage a Stanton apartment complex. Her independence was abruptly shattered by an intruder who raped her at knifepoint as a 911 call tape-recorded her cries.

When she died a month later, a coroner determined the cause of death was congenital heart failure and pneumonia. The autopsy also showed a ravenous form of lung cancer had taken hold in Ward’s body. No one then linked the physical injuries from the rape to the cause of her death.

But in perhaps one of the most novel prosecution theories to be put to the test in the state, the Orange County district attorney’s office hopes to prove that the admitted rapist, Jose Alonso Garcia, murdered Ward by killing her spirit and sapping her will to live.

The case goes to trial today. Prosecutors say they intend to prove that the horror of the attack and Ward’s feelings of shame and humiliation triggered depression and “post-traumatic stress” that worsened her health and contributed to her death.

Defense attorneys, legal scholars and critics say the case could set a dangerous precedent as it delves into deeply emotional, even spiritual issues that have little basis in case law.

Garcia’s lawyer denounced the theory as “voodoo.”

“This whole case is just insanity,” said Deputy Public Defender Leonard Gumlia. “I guess this means that if a burglar steals a treasured heirloom, and the owner becomes depressed and sad and later dies, that’s murder too.”

Adding to the controversy, a legal adviser to the Mexican government has accused prosecutors of targeting Garcia, 20, as a legal “guinea pig” because he is Latino and an illegal immigrant.

But prosecutors say ethnicity played no role in the decision to press murder charges and that the case has shown enough merit to clear the several legal hurdles necessary to reach trial.

“A grand jury has looked at the facts of this case, and a Superior Court judge and appellate court (have) looked at the facts and the law in the case and concluded that we are not out of the ballpark,” said assistant Dist. Atty. John Conley.

Prosecutor David La Bahn said his case will rely on showing that the rape hastened Ward’s death. “The jury will be instructed that there need not be physical injury to prove the charges,” he said. “It will be up to the jury to decide.”

At the time of the attack--May 22, 1992--Ward, a widow, was active in the Jehovah’s Witnesses and helped to manage a Stanton apartment complex, collecting rent and handling complaints.

Ward woke about 2:30 a.m. to find a stranger splashing in the complex pool outside her bedroom window. Ward ventured outside to shoo the man away, but turned and ran inside to call 911 when the man came toward her.

Authorities said Garcia followed Ward inside and attacked her.

Orange County sheriff’s deputies responding to the 911 call captured Garcia in the act, officials said. After the attack, Ward told hospital officials she wished she had died, according to court records.

She refused to return to her apartment and moved--but she never regained her sense of safety, friends said. An elder at the Jehovah’s Witnesses Kingdom Hall recalled that Ward once panicked at the sight of a male groundskeeper outside the sliding-glass door of her new home.

Garcia lived in the same neighborhood as Ward. He worked as a dishwasher at an Orange County hotel, lived with relatives and sent most of his earnings to his mother in Mexico, Gumlia said.

Garcia had been drinking that night--his blood alcohol content was about .22, nearly three times the legal limit for driving--and he had sought the cool water on a warm night. He deeply regrets that night’s turn of events, his attorney said.

“He keeps saying to me that he cannot understand how he can be charged with murder. He says ‘I never meant to hurt her, I never meant to kill her,’ ” Gumlia said, adding that he believes Garcia attacked Ward because he was intoxicated.

Garcia, who grew up poor and has only a second-grade education, has one previous arrest, a misdemeanor for public intoxication, Gumlia said.

If convicted of murder and five sexual assault charges, Garcia faces life in prison without possibility of parole.

Some legal observers say the most critical information the jury receives may have nothing to do with evidence and everything to do with emotion and ethnicity.

“This is a far-fetched, wild theory. Who better to try it on than an illegal alien?” said attorney Ruben Salgado, a legal adviser to the Mexican Consulate in Santa Ana. “I feel personally that there is some discrimination in the way the district attorney’s office is handling this case.”

San Diego defense attorney Elisabeth Semel, past president of California Attorneys for Criminal Justice, agreed. “This case involves major society issues that are polarizing our community, mainly the role of the undocumented in committing crimes,” she said.

Another dispute is over the cause of Ward’s death.

Garcia’s defense attorney contends that a virulent form of cancer that was misdiagnosed earlier was found throughout her body. Ward died shortly after the initial radiation treatment caused her kidneys to fail, according to court papers filed by the defense.

But the prosecutor says the rape was a contributing cause of death, crushing Ward’s will to live and decreasing her resistance to illness.

“The prosecutor is charting new territory,” said Gregory Christopher Brown, an assistant professor of criminal justice at Chapman University in Orange. “He is banking on the jury being caught up in the emotional side of all this, a terrified elderly woman being raped.”

Santa Ana defense attorney William J. Kopeny finds limits to the prosecution argument.

“The question of what makes the human heart break, or what makes the human spirit either resilient enough to bounce back even stronger or break, is not something the criminal law was designed to answer,” he said.

UCLA law professor Peter Arenella said there is little relevant case law on the issue.

Similar cases are based on more direct links between criminal conduct and unintentional death. Arenella cited a noted case in which a robber was convicted of murder because the victim had a heart attack during the heist and died.

“In that case, it was clear that fear generated from the robbery triggered immediate, powerful stress that caused a fatal heart attack,” Arenella said. “In this case, you have an elderly woman with cancer. It certainly is a stretch.”

The case will be a tough one for both sides: Jurors will despise Garcia and his admitted rape of an elderly woman, Gumlia conceded. But the prosecution has the daunting task of proving that the brain possesses the power to govern life expectancy.

Among the mortality experts expected to be called during the case is Prof. David Phillips of UC San Diego.

A 1993 study by Phillips documents the power of the mind in controlling life expectancy. Chinese-Americans who subscribe to astrology are more likely to die during a year that is considered ill-fated for their diagnosed disease, his study found.

Phillips’ other studies have found that mortality rates among Jewish and Chinese people often drop before important occasions and rise afterward. And ill women have been found to prolong their lives until after a critical event. There is also a wealth of anecdotal tales about seemingly healthy spouses dying shortly after they are widowed.

Some defense attorneys also cited the common belief that people possess the “will to live,” but said such perceptions do not belong in the courtroom.

In a legal brief, Gumlia sarcastically argued that the prosecution’s theory--taken to its extreme--means Garcia is a mass murderer because Ward’s attack and death imposed life-shortening grief on her friends and relatives.