Attorney Pleads for Life of Woman Who Planned 2 Murders : Court: Mary Ellen Samuels had a midlife crisis, the jury considering the death penalty is told. Prosecutor says she deserves execution.

Imploring a jury to spare his client’s life, a defense attorney portrayed Mary Ellen Samuels, who masterminded the murders of her husband and another man, as a cookie-baking jailhouse “den mother” who should not be sentenced to death.

To the prosecutor, though, Samuels is a remorseless, money-grubbing killer who deserves to be executed.

Now, the decision whether Samuels lives or dies is in a jury’s hands. If the jury decides on death, Samuels, 45, would become just the fifth woman among the 383 murderers on California’s Death Row.

Samuels, convicted July 1 of two counts of first-degree murder, faces the death penalty because the jury found two special circumstances--that she had orchestrated multiple murders and that one of the killings was for financial gain.

According to testimony during her trial, Samuels would have received $30,000 if her husband divorced her. But with insurance proceeds, his estate ballooned to $500,000 when he was slain.

She spent the insurance money in less than a year--on a Porsche, a condo in Cancun, parties, trips and clothes.

Robert Samuels, 40, a motion picture camera assistant who worked on the films “Lethal Weapon” and “Heaven Can Wait,” was killed Dec. 8, 1988, in his Northridge home by an intruder who shot him in the back of the head, firing a 16-gauge shotgun through a pillow.

Seven months later, James Bernstein, the 27-year-old reputed drug dealer suspected in Samuels’ death, was beaten, choked and left to die in remote Lockwood Canyon in Ventura County.

Portraying Samuels as a selfish, manipulative predator and “the mastermind of two evil plots,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Jan Maurizi told the jury: “I ask you for a verdict of death for all the selfish and inhumane decisions she made in her life. I ask you, ladies and gentlemen, how many bodies does it take? We’re talking about murder for the sake of the almighty dollar.”

But defense attorney Josh Groshan repeatedly pleaded with jurors, “Don’t kill my client. Don’t kill Mary Ellen.” Acknowledging that Samuels “did something despicable,” Groshan said, “Mary Ellen is a woman who lost her way in life. Call it a midlife crisis.”

Since Monday, a stream of witnesses has told of Samuels’ upbringing and background as the defense attempted to portray her in a sympathetic light.

Her ailing mother, Ellen Gurnick, who was undergoing cancer surgery while the lawyers argued Thursday, asked the jury to spare her daughter.

“What a choice for sentence,” she said, pondering the alternatives for her daughter--life or death. “I want her to live. I don’t want her to die.”

In the courtroom, there were dozens of happy family photos on display, showing Samuels at childhood birthday parties and skating outings, as a radiant bride marrying on her 21st birthday and as a young mother.

And then the rosy images would fade.

Her former husband, Ronnie Lee Jamison, told the jury that he wanted Samuels to live, that she had been a loving, understanding, generous spouse during their 11 years of marriage--even though she divorced him and kicked him out of the house when he lost his job.

Later, under cross-examination, Jamison conceded that Samuels was a compulsive liar who gambled and used drugs during their marriage.