Jury Begins Deliberations in Twin Trial

Following a day and a half of closing arguments, a jury on Tuesday began deliberating the fate of 23-year-old Jeen Han and two teenagers who are charged with plotting to kill Han’s identical twin sister, Sunny. After three hours of deliberations, jurors adjourned for the night and will resume their work this morning.

Earlier Tuesday, attorneys in the highly publicized case were given a final opportunity to try to interpret for jurors what happened on Nov. 6, 1996--the day Sunny Han and her roommate, Helen Kim, were bound and gagged at gunpoint and placed in a bathtub by two men who burst into their Irvine apartment. Jeen Han was waiting in the parking lot outside.

According to Deputy Dist. Atty. Bruce Moore, 17-year-old Archie Bryant and 16-year-old John Sayarath committed the crimes at the request of Jeen Han, who he contends planned to shoot her twin sister herself.

“They agreed to do their role,” Moore said. “Conspiracy is a division of labor.”

Moore said many factors point to a conspiracy and prior planning between the three. He remarked that if they were not planning Sunny Han’s death, they “must be the unluckiest people in the world” because the evidence points toward their guilt.

But Bryant’s attorney, Ernest Eady, told jurors that they had not been given enough evidence to prove “beyond a reasonable doubt” that a conspiracy existed. He said the defendants could only be convicted of lesser charges, including robbery and false imprisonment, because it had not been proved that they planned to kill anyone.

“If there are two reasonable interpretations, you have to take the interpretation that moves away from guilt,” Eady told jurors, adding that they must take “a bunch of leaps” in order to believe the prosecution’s version of events.

“There’s a danger in that,” said Eady, who did not dispute his client’s role in the robbery or that Bryant had a gun.

Also Tuesday, defense attorneys asked for a mistrial in the case, arguing that Moore had made an improper remark in his closing argument and unfairly influenced the jury. Among the remarks was the prosecutor’s observation about the brief amount of time it took to present Jeen Han’s defense.

Judge Eileen C. Moore, who is not related to the prosecutor, denied the motion but agreed to remind the jury that defendants are not required to prove they are not guilty.

At an impromptu news conference on the second floor of Orange County Superior Court, Eady and Salvatore P. Ciulla, Sayarath’s attorney, discussed the case before a battery of television cameras shortly after the jury broke for deliberations.

They said that to label the case the “good twin versus the evil twin,” as police had done shortly after Jeen Han’s arrest, was wrong and simplistic, especially after Sunny Han showed up in court after taking an overdose of sleeping pills on Nov. 4 and was unable to continue her testimony until a week later.

“I think they’re both manipulators,” Ciulla said. “Jeen manipulated these two boys just like her sister manipulated this court process a couple of weeks ago in a state in which she could not testify.”

In his remarks to the jury, prosecutor Moore said it is not difficult to believe that the relationship between the twins, who were co-valedictorians of their high school class and once very close, could have grown so bitter.

“People that had at one time loved each other kill each other,” Moore said. “It happens every day in America.”