Jury Convicts 2 Teenagers in Murder of 14-Year-Old

A jury quickly found two Tustin teenagers guilty of first-degree murder Wednesday in the shooting death of a 14-year-old youth, a crime authorities said the pair committed so as to steal the victim’s $2,500 stereo system.

Tommy Miller, 17, faces a maximum sentence of life in prison without parole for shooting Carl Claes to death last year. Jason Merritt, 19, faces up to 30 years to life in prison for aiding his friend.

Relatives of the defendants, who were tried as adults, wept at the verdict. The victim’s mother nodded her head and looked directly at the jurors for the first time during the monthlong trial, which was often tense and emotional.

“They won’t be able to hurt another family,” the victim’s mother, Danella George, said afterward of the defendants. “Now we move from trauma to grief.”

The jurors, who reached a verdict after only three hours of deliberation, would not comment later except to express relief that the ordeal was over.

Authorities described the crime as chilling, not only because of the ages and motives of the defendants but also because testimony described rampant drug use, chronic truancy and easy access to guns. Miller was 16 and Merritt 17 at the time of the crime.

Claes, an eighth-grader, was found fatally shot May 17, 1995, on a dirt path in Lemon Heights, a few miles from the Tustin home he shared with his grandfather.

His mother, an employee of the U.S. Forest Service at the time, lived in the Northern California town of Sonora and planned to move her son there at the end of the school year.

As the trial opened, a hushed courtroom listened to a tape recording secretly made of Miller and Merritt talking in a jail cell. As they concocted a cover-up story, they joked that they might say they were brain-damaged, copying the defense used by one of the youths accused in the 1992 slaying of Tustin high school student Stuart Tay.

“It’s chilling to think these defendants would kill a young boy and talk about it so callously,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Carolyn Kirkwood said.

Danella George said she was horrified by the tape and the things said about her only child, buried in eastern Texas next to his grandmother, who had died only weeks earlier.

“This gang, that’s what I call them, was never interested in friendship with Carl but were acquainted to his equipment,” she said.

“Carl was innocent. He never had been arrested. No gangs. No drugs. No guns. He was in grief for his grandmother, he loved music, and he had a learning disability that caused him to trust people he shouldn’t have trusted.”

Miller, taking the stand in his own defense during the trial, admitted shooting Claes but said he was under the influence of methamphetamine when he pulled the trigger and was not out to steal the other youth’s mobile disc jockey unit.

He said the three gathered in the affluent area to burglarize a house, and he shot Claes when the youth backed out of the plan.

Defense attorney William Morrissey said Miller suffers from brain damage consistent with heavy drug use and was suffering from methamphetamine “psychosis” when he shot Claes. Earlier that night, Morrissey said, Miller had spelled his name with the powdery drug and then inhaled it.

The attorney said he was disappointed that jurors found Miller guilty of premeditated murder and of carrying out the murder for financial gain, a special circumstance allegation that makes Miller eligible for the life sentence without parole.

Merritt, who contended he had no idea that Claes would be killed, was found guilty of first-degree murder but not of the special circumstance of committing a murder during a robbery.

The prosecutor argued that the two teens planned to kill Claes in a dispute over the stereo system, which Claes had loaned to Miller but wanted back.

On the night of the killing, prosecutor Kirkwood said, Miller and Merritt used the number 187, that of the state statute on murder, when paging each other to signal that it was time to get Claes.

The three drove to the foothills of Tustin where, according to Kirkwood, Miller shot Claes in the head as Merritt waited nearby in a van. Afraid that the victim might not be dead, the pair returned a few minutes later, and Miller shot Claes in the head again, Kirkwood said.

The two then went to buy food at a fast-food restaurant and handed off the .22-caliber murder weapon to two friends.

Several other youths, including Miller’s younger brother, have already been convicted on accessory charges in the case.

Miller and Merritt are to be sentenced Jan. 31 by Superior Court Judge Francisco P. Briseno.