O.C. Public Defender Always Tries His Best : Profile: Huber murder suspect ‘can’t buy a better lawyer,’ say Leonard Gumlia’s admirers and adversaries.

It was only fitting that when Catholic pre-marriage counselors asked Deputy Public Defender Leonard Gumlia and his fiancee the most important event in their lives, both answered with the name of a celebrated Orange County murder case.

After all, it was while working on the death-penalty defense of Cynthia Lynn Coffman, accused along with her boyfriend of killing three people, that Gumlia met paralegal Kristin Widman. They were married in a Lake Arrowhead ceremony last July.

During their honeymoon in Canadian national parks, Gumlia woke up in the middle of the night to jot down notes on another high-profile murder case: Gary Beaudoin’s alleged slaying of his ex-wife and her lover.

On Friday, Gumlia and Widman were at it again, sifting through newspaper clippings and meeting Gumlia’s newest client. Just the day before, Orange County authorities had filed charges accusing John J. Famalaro of first-degree murder and kidnaping in the death of Denise Huber. Gumlia was assigned the case by his office.

“He takes it home, definitely. That’s one reason it’s good to work together--we can talk about it all hours,” Widman, 26, a paralegal in the public defender’s office, said as the two finished their work late Friday afternoon in Prescott. “He works everywhere.”

Gumlia, 38, has spent his whole career at the Orange County public defender’s office, save for a brief stint as a legal researcher at the 4th District Court of Appeal. Now one of the public defender’s office’s 21 senior attorneys handling the most complex cases, he is lauded by colleagues and adversaries alike as an intense workaholic who grows passionate about his indigent clients and wins cases through meticulous research.

“You simply can’t buy a better lawyer than Gumlia,” said Jennifer Keller, treasurer of the Orange County Bar Assn. and a close friend of Gumlia’s from her days at the public defender’s office. “You see great trial lawyers who perform very well for a jury but don’t know anything about the law. Then, you see guys, professorial and great on the law, but who couldn’t persuade a jury it was Monday. (Gumlia) can do both.”

Superior Court Judge William Bedsworth, who crossed swords with Gumlia as a deputy district attorney, echoed Keller’s praise.

“He’s an excellent lawyer, scholarly, thorough and dedicated to his clients,” Bedsworth said. “Writing briefs or arguing them in court, there are few lawyers who excel at both. But (Gumlia) is the exception.”

Famalaro, the 37-year-old house painter who is accused of beating 23-year-old Huber to death in a Laguna Hills warehouse, then storing her body in a freezer for three years, is by no means Gumlia’s first notorious client.

It was Gumlia who defended Jose Alonso Garcia, the Stanton man accused of “killing the spirit” of a 79-year-old woman who died in June, 1992, a month after Garcia raped her. He also represented former San Clemente police officer David Wayne Bryan, who was convicted of raping a fellow officer and assaulting another woman. And Gumlia was on Orange County’s first “three strikes and you’re out” case too.

But no case was more important than People vs. Coffman.

“I’ll measure every other case against that in terms of interest and challenge,” Gumlia said of the trial of the former cocktail waitress, who was convicted of first-degree murder in Orange County but spared the death penalty. “The horror of the crimes themselves, offset by the absolute brutality (Coffman) went through--I don’t think there will ever be a case that will re-create the human dynamics of that. Being able to present that logically and coherently to a jury was a near-impossible task.”

Widman said she and Gumlia still regularly call and visit Coffman, who is on death row at the state’s Central Women’s Jail in Chowchilla for a murder conviction in San Bernardino County.

For his opening argument in the Coffman case, Gumlia wrote--and then read in court for some two hours--a 145-page novelistic account of the defendant’s life, beginning with a geological history of the county in which she was born. It is that combination of thorough research and caring concern that makes Gumlia stand out, colleagues said.

“He turned the Coffman case on its head,” Keller said. “He had the jurors crying, and they never seriously considered giving her the death penalty. That’s classic.”

Nearly as important to Gumlia personally was the Beaudoin case, which he considers his biggest failure. After Beaudoin was convicted of first-degree murder, Gumlia considered filing a motion for a mistrial based on his own incompetence and asked a private attorney friend to review the case in search of some tactical mistake he might have made. The case is currently on appeal.

“People who are really good criminal defense attorneys often are just brilliant technicians and don’t care about their clients. The thing that makes Leonard such a unique gem among defense attorneys is that he cares about his clients with a depth that you rarely see,” said Deputy Public Defender Denise Gragg, a co-worker and close friend.

“He cared more about Gary Beaudoin’s fate than his own ego,” she said. “When he goes to court, it’s a personal battle as well as a legal one. That’s an attribute of all great defense attorneys.”

The son of a plumber and potato farmer, Gumlia grew up in Minnesota and decided early to become a lawyer.

“I don’t remember why,” he said, “I just remember talking about it from the time I was 10 or 11.”

After graduation from Stanford University in 1978 and UCLA Law School three years later, Gumlia honed in on criminal work and, finally, being a public defender.

“I like challenges, I like the complexity, I like problem-solving, I like competition,” he said. “I did kind of like the idea of being the underdog and the idea of helping someone, though it’s not social work. It’s not holding people’s hands.”

Gumlia said he has chosen to stay at the public defender’s office rather than move to a private firm where he could earn far more money because he believes all people deserve diligent legal counsel.

“I’ve seen guilty people be declared innocent and innocent people declared guilty,” he said. “Both those bother me. But where I line up philosophically, I’d rather it be the guilty being acquitted.”

With two younger sisters who went to college on golf scholarships, and a mother who was Minnesota state champion in the game, it’s no surprise that Gumlia loves the links. He’s also a committed Stanford football fan and follows the Minnesota Twins closely.

Gumlia and Widman recently bought a house in Tustin, where they live with their Labrador and two cats. He starts work early and stays late, and labors on weekends, like most big-case attorneys. But Gragg and Widman said what separates him is how he thinks and talks about his cases when away from work.

“He hardly sleeps when he’s in trial,” his wife said. “He’ll just stay up downstairs, watching TV, working, then he’ll come upstairs and lay down and ruminate the whole time. Then, he’ll get up early and go to work.”

In the courtroom--with Widman sitting behind him, taking notes in synchronization if she is assigned to the case--Gumlia is a fast talker, often earning the wrath of court reporters who cannot keep up. Within the public defender’s office, he is a trusted and respected colleague who often fields questions from fellow attorneys, or joins in impromptu conferences about how to handle a fact or point of law.

“He’s very passionate about his cases. He cares about the client. There’s nothing that’s too much work for him,” said Beth Ann Goss, an investigator with the public defender’s office who accompanied Gumlia to Prescott Friday. “He’s incredibly intense and demanding. But at the same time, it’s not like anybody resents that. You respect that kind of commitment.”

Gragg, who has handled her share of high-profile murders herself, called Gumlia “brilliant,” and “the most thorough attorney I’ve ever known.”

“He’s unique, he’s like no one I’ve ever seen when he’s working on a big case,” she said. “There’s not a moment of time that he’s not thinking about it or talking to someone about it. There is no part of his life that’s not affected when he’s on a big case.”

Despite the pressure of his cases and the intensity to which he brings to his work, Gumlia does not always take himself seriously and is not above poking fun at himself.

“He’s always joking about his name,” Keller said. “He says he hates being named Leonard Gumlia. He says it’s bad enough being named Gumlia without also being named Leonard. He’s often said, ‘Why couldn’t my mother have named me Bob?’ ”

* RELATED STORIES: A32, A36

Gumlia Briefs

Representing Denise Huber murder suspect John J. Famalaro will not be the first high-profile case for Orange County Public Defender Leonard Gumlia. A look at some of his other notable battles:

Richard W. Nelson

* Case: Santa Cruz man who, along with two other men, was accused of transporting 5 1/2 tons of marijuana in their boat from South America to California.

* Result: On April 13, 1987, Orange County Superior Court Judge Francisco P. Briseno found that Newport Beach police had illegally searched the boat, and he dismissed the charges. Gumlia called the judge’s decision “courageous.”

David Wayne Bryan

* Case: Former San Clemente police officer accused in a sexual assault case. In his remarks to the judge, Gumlia characterized one of the counts as a “low-grade” rape and said he didn’t believe Bryan was a “pathological danger” to society.

* Result: Bryan was sentenced Jan. 17, 1992, to seven years in prison.

Cynthia Lynn Coffman

* Case: 30-year-old former cocktail waitress accused in the robbery/abduction/strangling of Huntington Beach teen-ager Lynel Murray. Gumlia said his client was a “battered woman” who was dominated by her boyfriend, James Gregory Marlow, and did not deserve the death penalty.

* Result: Coffman was sentenced Sept. 25, 1992, to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Gary Beaudoin

* Case: 32-year-old Huntington Beach man murdered his estranged wife and her lover.

* Result: Beaudoin was sentenced April 8 to life in prison without parole.

Jose Alonso Garcia

* Case: 20-year-old Stanton dishwasher whose rape of 79-year-old Mary Ward resulted in a novel, though unsuccessful murder prosecution: that the rape sapped her will to live and caused her death a month later. Jurors determined otherwise.

* Result: Garcia was sentenced May 17, 1994, to 28 years in prison for rape but not murder.

Mario Veliz Rodriguez

* Case: First Orange County resident charged under the “three strikes” law; faces felony assault/weapons charges for allegedly shooting a man in the face with a flare gun during a barroom brawl.

* Result: Scheduled to stand trial later this year.

Source: Times reports; Researched by CAROLINE LEMKE / Los Angeles Times