Officials Deny Latinos Purposely Excluded From Grand Jury : Government: Defense attorneys in a Thousand Oaks death-penalty case file a motion seeking records on the panel’s ethnic makeup over the past decade.

Responding to a legal challenge in a death-penalty case, local officials denied Wednesday that Latinos are systematically excluded from the Ventura County grand jury and said many of them are either too young to serve on the panel or are noS. citizens.

Meanwhile, the judge presiding over the Thousand Oaks death-penalty case in which the issue has been raised removed himself from hearing the matter regarding the makeup of the grand jury because of a conflict of interest.

Superior Court Judge Charles R. McGrath said he disqualified himself from hearing the motion because he and his colleagues on the bench select the grand jury. A visiting judge from Santa Barbara County will decide the issue, McGrath said in court.

He said he will preside over the remainder of the case, including the trial set for Aug. 1.

The makeup of the grand jury became an issue in the case last month, when attorneys for defendant Mark Scott Thornton filed a motion asking that the county turn over records relating to the ethnic and racial composition of the grand jury from the past 10 years.

Thornton, 19, is accused of kidnaping and fatally shooting Westlake nurse Kellie O’Sullivan on Sept. 19. The case captured widespread attention at the time, especially during a 12-day search for O’Sullivan. Her body was found amid brush in the Santa Monica Mountains.

Although O’Sullivan was white and Thornton is white, defense attorneys have questioned whether the grand jury that indicted Thornton in December had the proper number of Latinos on it to be cross-representational of the county’s population.

Thornton’s attorneys also want to examine the makeup of the grand jury over the past 10 years to determine whether there has been a pattern of systematically excluding Latinos from the panel. The grand jury investigates political corruption and considers felony criminal matters for indictment.

Roberto R. Orellana, assistant county counsel, said a preliminary review in response to the defense motion shows that no discrimination against Latinos or other minorities who have been eligible to sit on the grand jury has been found.

He said 10.8% of the 300 people serving on the grand jury in the past 10 years have been Latino.

Orellana said during that same time span, only 14.9% of the Latinos in the county have been eligible for service. He based eligibility to serve on whether the person is at least 18 years of age and a citizen of the United States.

He also said the percentage of Latinos eligible for grand jury service could decrease even further when such factors as proficiency in English are taken into account.

For the defense to successfully argue that Latinos have been systematically excluded from the county grand jury, the disparity between those eligible to serve and those picked for the panel would have to be at least 5%, Orellana said.

He noted that the difference is 4.1%.

“We just want to show that there had been no active discrimination and the courts have done all they could do,” Orellana said.

Deputy Public Defender Susan R. Olson said defense attorneys would still like to research the issue to see what results they come up with regarding the grand jury’s ethnic composition.

Olson said defense attorneys believe that Latinos have indeed been excluded from grand jury service, although, she said, they don’t feel that the exclusions have been purposeful.

She said the defense would like to have Thornton’s grand jury indictment thrown out. Grand jury proceedings are closed to defense attorneys and the public. Olson suggested that grand juries are too easily manipulated by prosecutors.