Judge Deplores Costs, Ponders Ng Trial Move

A Superior Court judge Friday wondered if the mass murder trial of Charles Ng should be moved elsewhere because of legal wrangling by the defendant that threatens to escalate the cost and further delay a trial scheduled for September.

“Is there any merit in reconsidering a place where this trial should be tried?” Judge John J. Ryan asked attorneys during a hearing on the case. “Right now, even though I have no idea what this case costs, I’m thinking it’s a lot of money. I’m thinking about public money.”

Ng, a 35-year-old former Marine, is accused of torturing and killing a dozen people in 1984 and 1985 at a hideaway in the Sierra Nevada foothills. He has pleaded not guilty and could face the death penalty if convicted. The case was moved to Orange County in 1994 because of widespread publicity in Calaveras County, where most of the victims lived.

The trial has already been delayed more than 10 years. The latest problem centers on Ng’s insistence that a San Francisco public defender who has represented him in the past join the Orange County public defenders who have been appointed to represent him and with whom he has refused to cooperate.

The cost of hiring the attorney, Michael Burt, has not been agreed upon by local court officials but will be further discussed next week when the parties return to court. Ng has made clear that if Burt does not join his legal team, he wants a separate trial to determine whether he is competent to stand trial.

A competency trial would mean that other attorneys would have to be appointed to represent Ng since his current attorneys would have to testify as witnesses.

Such delays have annoyed Ryan, who said: “My goal is to get this case tried and tried fairly by September 1998.”

Ryan said he is not leaning in one direction or another about a change of venue, but he wants attorneys to consider the possibility.

“I will try this case,” the judge said. “I will hear all the motions, I will do everything I can do. I want to do it within reason and with cost in mind.”

Ng has made numerous motions since 1991 to have his attorneys replaced and at one point asked to represent himself. He was arrested in 1985 in Canada, where he fought extradition for six years until Canada’s Supreme Court sent him back to California.

The parents of one of Ng’s alleged victims left the courtroom furious on Friday over the latest legal maneuvers in a case already expected to be one of the longest and costliest in state history.

“How in the world can [Ng] be competent if he has one attorney and not competent if he has another?” asked Dwight Stapley, whose 26-year-old son, Scott, was slain in 1984. “That’s a scam. That’s crazy.”

The victim’s mother, Lola Stapley, said as she left the courtroom: “How can he manipulate people like this?”