Judge OKs Request to Delay Thornton’s Sentencing : Courts: Defense asks for more time to prepare argument urging life term rather than death penalty, as jury recommended.

A judge on Monday agreed to delay for nearly a month the sentencing of convicted Thousand Oaks killer Mark Scott Thornton, who faces a possible death penalty for kidnaping and murdering a Westlake nurse.

Superior Court Judge Charles R. McGrath, who was scheduled to sentence Thornton today for the 1993 murder of 33-year-old Kellie O’Sullivan, reset the hearing for May 15.

The delay came at the request of defense attorneys, who said the continuance gives them more time to prepare a motion urging McGrath to reduce Thornton’s sentence from death to life in prison without parole.

A jury voted last month to sentence Thornton to Death Row. McGrath must impose the verdict or reduce it to the lesser penalty.

Deputy Public Defender Susan R. Olson said that under state law, McGrath automatically is required to consider modifying the verdict, whether defense attorneys ask him to do so or not. The judge can reduce the verdict if he determines that the evidence presented during trial does not adequately justify the death penalty.

“As a practical matter, it’s (a judicial review) done in every case,” she said.

But defense attorneys, who have been publicly criticized by Thornton as incompetent, want to let the judge know the specific reason they believe the sentence should be life in prison, Olson said. The motion will be filed by Friday, she said.

Prosecutors disagree with the defense’s assertion that the jury’s sentence does not fit the crime. They have called Thornton a coldhearted murderer.

Thornton, in two jailhouse interviews with The Times, has expressed ambivalence over the verdict. He has called the death-penalty recommendation a victory in that he thinks Death Row is safer than other sections of the prison.

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The young defendant said he could live the rest of his life in peace in the protective housing of San Quentin’s Death Row. If he received the lesser sentence, he said, he would be exposed to physical and sexual assault.

Blasting his attorneys as ineffective, Thornton claimed they refused to allow him to testify during his trial. He was convicted of first-degree murder in December; the jury recommended execution last month.

Olson said Monday that Thornton’s caustic remarks had no bearing on the defense’s delay in filing the motion to have his sentence reduced.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Peter D. Kossoris, who prosecuted Thornton, said it is not unusual for defendants condemned to death to lash out at their lawyers. But with Thornton, he said, “it’s happening a little earlier,” before the judge makes the final ruling.

“A very high percentage of competent trial lawyers would want to keep Mark Scott Thornton off the stand for a number of reasons,” Kossoris said, calling the defendant a liar and con artist.

Thornton kidnaped O’Sullivan in Thousand Oaks on Sept. 14, 1993. He forced her to the Santa Monica Mountains, shot her once in the chest and twice in the back and stole her Ford Explorer.

In their motion opposing a reduction of the jury’s verdict, prosecutors cited 11 factors they said make Thornton’s crime particularly heinous. They include premeditation and the loss suffered by O’Sullivan’s family, including her 6-year-old son.