Woman Convicted in 2 Murders Avoids Execution

Almost three years to the day she and her lover murdered his mother and ex-girlfriend at Universal CityWalk, Donna Lee was spared the death penalty on Monday when prosecutors announced they will no longer seek her execution.

Instead, she will be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

A jury convicted Lee and Paul Carasi earlier this year of two counts of first-degree murder for the 1995 Mother’s Day slayings. The same jury recommended death for Carasi, but deadlocked on Lee’s sentence. Two of the 12 jurors said they could not vote for death because they were not sure how large a role she played in the murders.

Prosecutors could have persisted, pursuing a second trial on only the penalty question, but Deputy Dist. Atty. John Gilligan said Monday that, although the decision is personally disappointing, his office will accept a life sentence because it would be even harder to get a death sentence at a retrial.

“The decision was based on the broadly held view that it would be more difficult to obtain a unanimous verdict on death with simply Miss Lee being present and with Mr. Carasi not there to deflect the aspersions cast in his direction,” he said. “It’s always easier to blame it on the phantom than somebody who’s live, in court, with counsel.”

But Gilligan also said that he still thinks Lee deserved death as much as Carasi did.

“I think it was clear that she was the stronger personality despite her defense,” he said. “This would not have happened without her consent.”

During the trial, Henry J. Hall, Lee’s lawyer, claimed that she was not a murderer but a third victim who was stabbed while asleep in her car after being stood up by Carasi. Hall also said that the event was so traumatic that Lee, a lifelong victim of abuse, blocked it from her memory.

Outside the courtroom, Ralph Courtney, the public defender who represented Carasi, said prosecutors should never have sought death for either defendant.

“I think they’re equally culpable for their crimes and I think it shows the error in seeking the death penalty for both of them,” he said.

Both Carasi and Lee are to be sentenced May 26. Although the jury recommended death for Carasi, the judge could set the penalty at life without parole.

Courtney said he has already begun to review transcripts in preparation for the automatic appeal of Carasi’s death sentence.

During the trial, Gilligan and Deputy Dist. Atty. Phil Stirling told the jury that the couple chose to murder Carasi’s ex-girlfriend Sonia Salinas, and his mother, Doris Carasi, after Salinas attached his wages for the support of their son Michael, now 5. His mother sided with Salinas, taking the young woman into her apartment and telling Carasi to move out.

Inspired by the murders of Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman, Carasi took the two women and his son to a Mother’s Day dinner at the Country Star restaurant at Universal CityWalk, then killed the women in a secluded corner of the parking lot with Lee’s help.

But the plan began to fall apart when Salinas fought back, slashing Lee’s stomach. Lee’s blood was found at the murder scene.

Then, as she was disposing bloody evidence over an embankment of the Hollywood Freeway, Lee locked herself out of her car. Badly injured from a cut that exposed her intestines, she called authorities on an emergency call box and said she had been stabbed by highway bandits.

Lee and Carasi were convicted in March of the murders and the special circumstances of ambushing the women, being motivated by money, and multiple murders--any one of which can carry the death penalty.

Judicial economy is another reason Gilligan said he is no longer seeking the death penalty. A second trial on Lee’s penalty would take almost as long as the guilt and penalty phases of the first trial, which lasted nearly five months.