Prosecutor Uses Dramatic Tape in Teen Slaying Trial

In a surprise opening of a murder trial Tuesday, a hushed courtroom listened to a tape secretly made of two teenagers apparently concocting a cover-up story for the killing of a 14-year-old from Tustin for his stereo system.

The tape was made in a Juvenile Hall cell, where Tommy Miller, 17, and Jason Merritt, 19, both of Tustin, were being held on suspicion of shooting eighth-grader Carl Dan Claes in the head.

Some in the audience in Orange County Superior Court appeared stunned as Deputy Dist. Atty. Carolyn Kirkwood played lengthy excerpts from the tape. Relatives of the defendants wept.

“They have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt,” Miller said on the tape. “They don’t have my prints on the gun. I don’t know why.”

The pair also made fun of authorities for putting them in the same room, and discussed what evidence police had and how they would explain it away.

“It’s the [expletive] little things in between that make us look innocent,” said Miller, who boasted that the pair were the talk of Juvenile Hall.

The prosecution alleges that Claes had lent a $2,500 stereo system to Miller, which Miller had refused to return. Then, on May 17, 1995, Claes’ body was found on a dirt path in the affluent Lemon Heights community, about three miles from the home he shared with his grandfather.

Kirkwood said Miller and Merritt had paged Claes that night and the three had met. They drove him to the foothills of Tustin, where, according to Kirkwood, Miller shot Claes in the head. Afraid he might not be dead, the pair returned a few minutes later, and Miller shot Claes in the head again, Kirkwood said.

Kirkwood said Claes had survived the first shot, but not the second.

“Then they went to Jack in the Box for something to eat,” Kirkwood said.

In the tape recording, Miller suggested that the pair would tell police that a gang member had come to his Tustin home, demanding money at gunpoint and threatening to kill Miller’s family. They would explain to police that they contacted Claes that night because they knew he had a lot of money.

On the tape, Miller also mentioned the 1992 slaying of Stuart Tay, an honor roll student at Foothill High School in Tustin, by a group of teenagers, one of whom claimed to have brain damage and to have been recruited by others. Miller jokingly suggested they use the same defense.

On the night Claes was killed, Kirkwood said, Miller and Merritt used the number 187--the police code for murder--when paging each other to signal that it was time to go get Claes.

Kirkwood said the younger boy, a student at A.G. Currie Middle School, had fallen in with Miller, Merritt and their friends who attended a continuation high school because “he wanted friends, to be liked. He was insecure like a lot of 13- and 14-year-olds.”

Miller, who is accused of pulling the trigger, faces up to life in state prison without the possibility of parole if convicted. Prosecutors allege that Merritt accompanied Miller and was waiting nearby when the shooting took place. He faces a maximum sentence of 25 years to life if he is found guilty.

Defense attorneys did not present opening arguments Tuesday. Miller’s attorney, William Morrissey, declined to comment on the case. But Merritt’s attorney, William Elliott, said outside court that his client was not the driver of the van the night of the murder. He said Merritt never touched the murder weapon, had no interest in the stereo and had no motive for participating in the slaying.

The trial is expected to last three to four weeks. Observers were required to pass through a metal detector before entering the courtroom Tuesday, a safety precaution rarely used at the Orange County courthouse.