Prosecutor Asks Death for Killer of Family

A prosecutor told jurors Thursday that Edward Charles III is not deserving of sympathy, and the death penalty would be an appropriate punishment for the 23-year-old man convicted of killing his parents and brother.

“If this is not a case where the death penalty is appropriate, then what is?” Deputy Dist. Atty. David Brent asked jurors Thursday.

But an attorney for the Fullerton gas-station mechanic said the killings represented a complete “act of derailment” in Charles’ character, and that life in prison without parole would be a harsh punishment for a young man who has never been in trouble before with the law.

“Do you think life without parole is some kind of picnic?” Deputy Public Defender Ronald Klar asked.

Jurors will begin deliberations next week on whether Charles should be executed or spend the rest of his life in prison for the November 1994 killings of his father, Edward Charles II, 55, a Hughes Aircraft engineer; his mother, Dolores, 47, a self-employed typist; and brother Danny, 19, a promising opera singer and performer in his second year at USC.

His father and brother had been stabbed and bludgeoned, his mother apparently strangled. All three bodies were found in a flaming car parked at a La Mirada school.

Relatives of the young man previously pleaded for jurors to spare him from a death sentence, saying their family has been ravaged by the loss of three loved ones and can bear no more killing.

“Their pain was obvious in this trial to you,” Klar told jurors. “We don’t want that pain anymore.”

The prosecutor acknowledged the power of the testimony from the relatives, but said, “You can’t be objective when you’re that close” and that the Eddie Charles they knew and loved is “gone.”

Testimony during the defendant’s three-day penalty phase depicted a middle-class family as loving and normal, yet torn by pride for Danny Charles and disappointment in Eddie Charles.

Klar said there was nothing wrong in the pride the parents felt for their youngest son or the high standards they set for both boys. But the effect on Charles, an aspiring boxer who had dropped out of college, was a growing sense of “frustration and agony,” the attorney said.