Prosecution Urges Death for D’Arcy

Excuses should not save Jonathan D’Arcy from receiving the death penalty for setting a Tustin bookkeeper on fire, a county prosecutor said Tuesday during a second penalty phase in the case.

“This murder is so brutal, so vicious, that there’s nothing that can mitigate a death sentence,” Deputy Dist. Atty. Robert Molko told a new panel of jurors during opening statements Tuesday in Orange County Superior Court.

The Buena Park man was convicted in December of killing Karen Marie LaBorde, but jurors deadlocked on whether he should receive the death penalty for the 1993 killing. The new jury must decide whether to recommend that D’Arcy be sentenced to death for his crime or serve life in prison without parole.

The defense is expected to ask jurors this morning to spare D’Arcy’s life because of severe mental problems brought on by an abusive upbringing.

Earlier this week, D’Arcy, 34, told Orange County Superior Judge Robert Fitzgerald he wanted to be put to death, but Fitzgerald responded that the court cannot allow him to commit suicide. D’Arcy remains on a hunger strike and is being kept alive by a court-ordered feeding tube.

In protest over the handling of his defense, D’Arcy will not appear in court during this new trial. But jurors were shown a photograph of the defendant’s face on court television monitors Tuesday.

D’Arcy was seeking revenge over a paycheck he thought was being withheld from him for janitorial work when he doused LaBorde with gasoline and set her ablaze with a cigarette lighter, Molko said.

After watching LaBorde burn before his eyes, D’Arcy calmly walked out of the Tustin office, asked a passerby for a light for a cigarette, then sat on a street corner waiting for police to arrest him, Molke said. LaBorde died eight hours later with 95% of her body badly burned.