Prospect of New Trial Terrifies Witness

Half a lifetime ago, Marie Pruett was the star witness in a murder trial that sent to Death Row the man convicted of killing her father and 14-year-old brother.

But the 31-year-old mother of three may soon have to return to the witness stand in Van Nuys--a prospect she says strikes her cold with terror--because of appeals and a series of legal quirks that could have set Kenneth Crandell free as early as today.

It seems, Pruett said Wednesday, as if Crandell is reaching out across thousands of miles to pull her back to her 15th summer, when she awoke one morning to find the bloodied bodies of her father and younger brother sprawled in the living room of their North Hollywood home.

“I lived through it once when he committed the crimes. I lived through it again during the first trial. To have to live through it again now, it’s just too much,” Pruett said. “He took so much from me. I feel like he’s continuing to take from me.”

Crandell was convicted in 1982 but the state Supreme Court overturned his death sentence six years later because he had refused to put on a “meaningful” defense during the penalty phase of his trial. An accomplished jailhouse lawyer, he had represented himself during the trial.

Then, last October, 16 years after the July 1980 slayings, Crandell’s murder conviction was overturned by a federal judge who found that a public defender Crandell briefly used had not competently advised him.

After that, things really got strange. Prosecutors were ordered to retry Crandell by today or set him free. Although they had won a temporary reprieve months ago, they didn’t know it until two weeks ago because the order was never entered in the federal court docket.

For the past month, Deputy Dist. Atty. Lea Purwin D’Agostino has scrambled to put together a case, even though it now is seriously crippled: Files have been lost, two witnesses have died, and all the physical evidence was destroyed long ago. But the original homicide investigator, Russ Lyons, found the “murder book” containing most of the important police files, and tracked down the living witnesses.

Crandell, who is in prison and has no lawyer, could not be reached for comment.

Pruett, now living in the Midwest, agreed, reluctantly, to return as the star witness.

During a telephone interview Wednesday, Pruett said she is terrified at the prospect of testifying again, but even more afraid of what might happen if Crandell should go free. She spoke on the condition that only her maiden name be published, to protect her family.

“The thought of him getting out scares me to death,” Pruett said. “I’m afraid for my kids. This has turned my life upside-down. It has invaded my thoughts, my sleep. I’m sick to my stomach. I can’t eat. It is pure torture.”

Pruett added, “I’m very frustrated. I was told 16 years ago that there would never be a chance that he would get out.”

The long-buried memories have returned, as vivid as ever: Crandell, her father’s best friend, holding her at gunpoint, hissing with boozy breath that she must never, ever tell anyone or he’d “go to the gas chamber.” Crandell ordering her to undress and trying to rape her. Crandell warning her, “I’m gonna have to keep my eye on you,” and threatening to kill her after she hit him on the head with an iron skillet. Crandell telling her at gunpoint that he needed her help to bury the bodies in the desert.

When Crandell briefly left to get cash from a friend, Pruett was able to sneak out of the house, along with her 7-year-old sister. She called police from a neighbor’s house, and Crandell was arrested.

On Monday, Crandell was sent back to state prison in Tehachapi after D’Agostino handed a Van Nuys judge a copy of the federal stay that had been lost for months. It halted any court action until prosecutors can appeal the overturned murder conviction.

The case is in legal limbo, but prosecutors in Van Nuys are not confident of winning an appeal. That makes the prospect of a retrial likely.

Meanwhile, Pruett said that after so many years, Crandell once again chases her in her dreams.

“He’s coming after me. I just feel, really, I just want to protect my family. I’m sorry I’m getting emotional over this,” she said, holding back tears. “Does this judge realize the hell he’s putting me through with that decision?”

D’Agostino said that she is particularly unhappy that Crandell’s conviction was overturned because the state Supreme Court already had upheld it. No appellate court has ever questioned his guilt.

Instead, the courts have focused on his legal representation.

Ironically, Crandell was praised at the end of his first trial by the judge, Armand Arabian, who became a state Supreme Court justice and is now retired.

“Mr. Crandell did a job which absolutely astounded me,” Arabian said at the trial, according to the state Supreme Court’s 1988 decision. “I have seen the best come and go. The level of his performance was surprising to me.”

The judge added that Crandell’s defense work had given prosecutor Stanley M. Weisberg, now a Superior Court judge best known for presiding over the Rodney King and Menendez trials, “a run for his money.” Crandell, he said, performed as competently as a defense lawyer with three murder trials under his belt.

In return, Crandell thanked Arabian for giving him a fair trial, and for showing him “courtesy and respect.” He also predicted --accurately, as time would prove--that he had a good chance at winning a new trial.

After the trial, Marie Pruett graduated from high school and won a college scholarship. Her mother had died the year before her father’s murder capped a drunken brawl with Crandell, and she and her sister went to live with relatives.

She married at 19, to a man she describes as “a great guy.” Her husband, who learned before Christmas that Crandell’s conviction had been overturned, kept it secret until Jan. 2 so as not to spoil the holidays for her, Pruett said.

She said she maintains “a glimmer of hope” that Crandell’s conviction will be upheld. Still, she said, she can’t help feeling that “things have gotten out of hand” in the criminal justice system.

“I consider myself a good citizen. I stay within the law. I’ve never had a speeding ticket, if that tells you anything. I try to do what’s right. But I feel like the laws are not in place to protect the victims anymore. I just plead with them to think about us for a change.”

D’Agostino concurs: “I think at some point there’s got to be an end to these appeals,” she said. “They cannot continue ad infinitum. If there was an issue as to whether this individual is guilty, I would have had no objection to the appeals going on forever. I do not want to be responsible for an innocent individual getting the death penalty.

“But this is just form over substance. It’s exactly what the public is outraged about. This is what has given the criminal justice system such a black eye. How many bites of the apple do you get?”