Fair Murder Trial Can Prove Cathartic for the Bereaved

Denise Huber’s parents had already presumed that their missing daughter was dead. They must have reserved a special place in their hearts and minds for a miracle, but when it didn’t come and when authorities in Arizona found her body nine days ago, the Hubers finally got relief from three years of cruel uncertainty.

Perhaps because they had already come to grips with Denise’s death, Ione and Dennis Huber have focused their comments on the future. And after the family business of the funeral and burial, that means the trial of whoever is charged with their daughter’s murder.

In that context, the Hubers touched a nerve. They wondered aloud whether it might be better to have the trial in Arizona, making the point that California juries seem to be too lenient toward the accused.

They didn’t mention specific cases, but their concern echoes that of a growing chorus not just in California but around the country--that the guilty too often go free. Or that even if they’re convicted, they don’t serve enough time or aren’t properly supervised while on parole.

Some of that concern is fiction--prosecutors continually point out that conviction rates remain high--but other parts of it ring true. The Menendez brothers, Lyle and Erik, admitted to killing their parents in the most brutal fashion, yet a jury couldn’t reach a verdict. And the confessed kidnaper and killer of young Polly Klaas had been in and out of prison much of his adult life.

I talked to “Sally,” a middle-aged Orange County woman whose husband was abducted and shot to death six years ago. She feared foul play immediately but didn’t learn for four or five days that her husband’s body had been found. She didn’t want her real name used but recalled her feelings leading up to and through the trial, which didn’t occur until two years after her husband’s death.

“After two years--and I had recovered somewhat, not much but somewhat--you build up walls to protect yourself from more hurt,” she said. “You build up a protective wall, isolate yourself a bit. You’re careful who you talk to. You protect yourself to a great degree. You work so hard at that. People say thoughtless things, and it hurts. Then you know you’re going to hit the trial and the walls you worked so hard to build up so carefully are going to come tumbling down, because you’re going to relive the crime and your feelings will be up at the surface again.”

She said she was watching TV the other night and saw former Los Angeles Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner refer to murder trials as being cathartic for surviving family members. “It is cathartic,” she said. “Indeed, I didn’t want to go to the trial. I maintained all the time that I wouldn’t go, but I went every day.”

The trial lasted about three months, she said. I asked if she could relate to the Hubers’ concern about a jury verdict.

Sally said she was convinced the prosecutors had the right man, “but my fear was that the jury would not see what was in front of them. But as the trial progressed, I became more and more convinced the jury saw right through it, and the whole thing was a reaffirmation of the jury system for me.”

As was Denise Huber, Sally’s husband was abducted from Orange County and taken elsewhere. His body was found in Riverside County, and that’s where the trial was held--for which Sally was grateful.

“Simply because of the media,” she said. “I didn’t want to sit down at night and watch it on TV. For me, it was protective, and I wonder if that isn’t what (the Hubers) are talking about.”

And when it was all over? “A trial is such an emotional event,” she replied. “You’re reliving everything that happened and knowing things you wish you didn’t know, and it’s painful, and you start building up this wall again after it’s over. But it’s the beginning of a closure. The beginning of a closure.”

For her, that came when the jury convicted the man and he was sent to Death Row, where he remains.

We citizen observers to these trials of murder are left to lament the victims and their families. We can only hope that the trials become true and honest tests of guilt or innocence and not simply events in which one attorney strives to outfox another and worries later about whether the guilty went free or the innocent was convicted.

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday.