Tuffree Jury Hung; Judge Calls Mistrial

Unable to break a jury deadlock, a Ventura County Superior Court judge declared a mistrial Thursday in the first-degree murder case of Daniel Allan Tuffree, the former high school teacher accused of fatally shooting a Simi Valley police officer last year.

One by one, the 12 jurors told Judge Allan L. Steele that they were hung on the first-degree murder charge, with nine voting to convict and three holding out in favor of a lesser charge of second-degree murder or manslaughter.

“We worked this over front to back and we still couldn’t reach a decision,” said holdout juror Carol Becker outside the courthouse. “They never changed their minds, and neither did we.”

Tuffree, 49, faced a possible death sentence in the shooting death of Officer Michael Clark on Aug. 4, 1995. Already split on the murder charge, the jury had found him guilty Wednesday on two lesser counts of armed assault and attempted murder for firing at another officer during the gunfight.

The startling conclusion to Tuffree’s six-week trial outraged members of the slain officer’s family, as well as law enforcement officials and prosecutors, who vowed to take the case to trial again in a second attempt to convict Tuffree of the maximum possible charge.

“We will just do it better next time,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Patricia Murphy told the officer’s relatives moments after the jury announced to a hushed courtroom that it was deadlocked.

Prosecutors and defense attorneys will have only a few days before they start up again for what amounts to Round Two of the Tuffree case--they are scheduled to appear in Steele’s courtroom Monday morning to discuss a new trial date.

Deliberating for more than a week, the jury had voted three times on whether Tuffree deliberately shot and killed Clark. The first vote was 6 to 5 with 1 undecided. The next two votes were locked at 9 to 3.

The breakdown in the deliberations was first revealed Wednesday afternoon after the jury told Steele it was deadlocked on the murder charge. In addition to ordering the jurors to continue deliberations on the assault and attempted murder charges, Steele tried to resolve the deadlock by asking jurors to write down any questions they might have.

Later in the day, in addition to their guilty findings on the two lesser counts, the jury gave the judge two questions on what constitutes premeditated murder. Steele gave them back his answers Thursday morning, and they resumed deliberations.

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But the exchange of notes between the jury and the judge failed to change anybody’s mind. In some cases, jurors said they only became more confused.

Moments before the jury came back into the courtroom Thursday afternoon, Deputy Dist. Atty. Pete Kossoris leaned over the courtroom gallery to tell Clark’s widow, Jenifer, that the deadlock continued. She started crying. Other members of Clark’s family looked stunned.

For some of the jurors who had consistently favored a first-degree murder conviction, the case was clear-cut.

“I wouldn’t have voted in favor of conviction if I had any doubt,” said jury foreman Mike CoyKendall, a 47-year-old insurance salesman and former attorney. “The sticking point was whether there was premeditation.”

But Mike Lorraine of Simi Valley was among jurors who said that the final day of deliberations left the jury confused over what it could and could not do.

Lorraine said he believed the jury would have convicted Tuffree of second-degree murder, had it not been for a technical snag in the jury instructions and miscommunication with Judge Steele.

“I believe that if we thought it was OK with both sides to come out with murder two, we would have done that,” said Lorraine, a telephone service technician.

Lorraine said the confusion came during the last-minute notes passed back and forth between the judge and the jury.

Jurors wanted to know if the judge would allow them to ignore an instruction that the jury had to unanimously agree that Tuffree was innocent of first-degree murder before it could consider a second-degree murder conviction.

Steele, he said, responded with a note saying, “Which way are you leaning?”

The jury, in turn, dispatched another note explaining it was still leaning toward first-degree murder, because the majority believed it to be the appropriate conviction.

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Looking back on the exchange, Lorraine said he interpreted the whole affair as a misunderstanding.

“We were assuming that he could infer from our question: Are you willing to back down on the rules?” he said. “In the notes, it was confusing.”

Lorraine said he initially was the one undecided vote on the murder charge, but then joined eight others favoring first-degree murder after they went step-by-step through the evidence.

He said the subject of premeditation dominated the jury deliberations. Ultimately, he was persuaded that the shooting was premeditated when Tuffree hid his gun and did not follow Clark’s instructions to knock off what he was doing and show his hands.

“In the back of his mind, he had to know what was going to happen,” Lorraine said.

Clark was one of three officers sent to Tuffree’s Simi Valley home last year after reports that Tuffree had been taking Valium, drinking alcohol and was possibly suicidal.

When Tuffree saw the officers entering his backyard with their guns drawn, he grabbed his own semiautomatic pistol and tried to hide. Spotted by Clark, he spoke briefly with the officer through his kitchen window, and then the gun battle began.

Tuffree admitted to shooting the officer in the back and arm, but told authorities he fired only after the officer shot at him. Prosecutors argued, however, that Tuffree was a police hater who intentionally killed the 28-year-old officer.

Time and time again, the jury went through the sequence of events that led up to the shootout Tuffree had with Clark in the sometimes heated deliberations.

For CoyKendall, the piece of evidence that swayed him most was the statement Tuffree made to authorities after he was arrested.

Tuffree had asked a deputy guarding him in the hospital after the shooting about whether his actions constituted first- or second-degree murder. CoyKendall said those statements convinced him Tuffree had some forethought when he shot Clark.

Two of the three holdout jurors, however, said they were not persuaded. They said they could not convict Tuffree of first-degree murder because there was reasonable doubt that the ex-teacher with a history of emotional problems premeditated the shooting.

“I feel that after thoroughly weighing and considering the evidence and the testimony, we were not convinced that this man could have premeditated murder,” said Becker, who wanted to convict Tuffree of second-degree murder or manslaughter.

Robert Mitchell, 51, of Ventura, also held out for second-degree murder. He said the panel dissected 218 pages of trial testimony line by line and listened to three hours of audiotape from the proceedings.

But he said no matter how heated deliberations became over the past week, no matter how hard the nine jurors in favor of first-degree murder tried to persuade them, he and the others were not convinced that Tuffree premeditated Clark’s murder.

He was quick to add that there was never a thought in any juror’s mind about a not-guilty verdict.

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“Mr. Tuffree was not getting off, he wasn’t going anywhere,” said Mitchell, who works for the U.S. Postal Service. “The three of us just felt there wasn’t enough evidence to prove premeditated murder. Time was very critical, everything happened so fast. I just didn’t feel there was time for that.”

Mitchell said the deliberations at times became very charged and animated. He said he didn’t feel badly that a mistrial had been declared, firm in the belief that everyone did their best.

“I feel it would have been worse if people would have changed their minds,” he said. “There was no evidence left unturned. We couldn’t think of anything else.”

Lorraine said deliberations were difficult. “It’s the toughest thing I’ve ever gone through,” he said.

The prospect of forcing another trial came up in the jurors’ discussions.

“We were thinking about the waste of time and money and the burden on Clark’s family,” Lorraine said. The jurors, he said, did not want to put another group of men and women through the same thing.

“I hope they can settle this case,” he said.

In front of the courthouse after the mistrial was declared, Clark’s family members held one another. Frederick Clark, Michael Clark’s father, said the family was angry and hurt.

“Daniel Tuffree is a murderer,” he said. “He ambushed my son. He killed him. He took the husband away from Jenifer, he took the father away from Bayley. He doesn’t deserve to live.”

Outside the courtroom Simi Valley Police Capt. Dick Wright, who was acting police chief when Clark was shot and killed, said the decision was a setback, but that it was not over.

“I think it’s a disappointment, yes. But we understand the process,” Wright said. “But it’s not over. We’ll be back. We’re ready to go through it again.”

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Clark was the first officer killed in the line of duty in the Simi Valley Police Department’s 24-year history, and Tuffree is the first suspected killer of a police officer to go to trial in Ventura County in the last quarter of a century.

Reaction to the deadlock among county law enforcement leaders was swift and decisive.

“Obviously I’m very disappointed,” Simi Valley Police Chief Randy Adams said. “Meantime, our hearts go out to the family. It’s hard enough to have to go through this once.”

Sheriff Larry Carpenter said that no matter how strong the evidence in any case, there is no predicting what a jury will do.

“Jury trials have become a little bit of a dice roll,” he said.

Simi Valley Mayor Greg Stratton said he hoped the district attorney’s office would rebound from the trial and learn from any mistakes.

“I think the D.A. is going to retry the case and hopefully they’ll learn a little bit from what they did,” said Stratton. “I’m optimistic. It’s very clear what happened [the day of the shooting incident]. I think that the D.A. is committed to this case and they will retry it and get a verdict that is right.”

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Staff writers Fred Alvarez, Kenneth R. Weiss, Lorenza Munoz and Mack Reed, and correspondents Scott Hadly, Jeff McDonald and Nick Green contributed to this story.