Murderer Tells Jury He Regrets Not Killing More

A former chiropractor convicted of murdering a man and sexually assaulting a woman during a 1997 rampage said his only regret was “that I didn’t get to kill more of you.”

Looking at jurors who will decide his fate, David Wayne Arisman said Tuesday, “I hate this government and the society that supports it. That means you. You are my enemies, and I am justified in killing you.”

Deputy Dist. Atty. Eleanor Hunter looked at Arisman for a moment as the courtroom waited for her cross-examination. “I have no questions,” she said.

Jurors are being asked to decide whether Arisman deserves the death penalty.

Arisman, 50, was convicted of murdering one of two deliverymen who interrupted Arisman’s sexual assault on a 26-year-old office worker in Manhattan Beach in April 1997.

He was also found guilty of attempted murder, sexual assault, false imprisonment and murder in the course of forced oral copulation.

Arisman fatally shot Michael Trinidad, 29, and choked Trinidad’s co-worker and best friend, Richard Moriel.

“I’m surprised that someone would have so little compassion for human life,” Moriel said outside court. “I didn’t know he was such an evil man.”

Hunter wept as she described the attack.

Defense attorney Robert Doddy urged the jury to spare Arisman’s life, focusing on evidence of his client’s mental illness and of how he went “off the deep end” after being hit with a shovel by a neighbor in 1984.

“When you found David Arisman guilty of these crimes, you sentenced him to die in prison,” Doddy said. “The only question is whether he will die by your order, at a time and place set by the judge, or whether he will die in prison at a time and manner decided by God.”