Judge Upholds Reassignment of High-Profile Case

The county’s top criminal judge Friday held firm on his decision to reassign a high-security murder trial from the San Fernando Valley downtown.

Prosecutors had requested Superior Court Judge Larry Fidler reconsider last week’s ruling on the death penalty case, which involves follow-home robberies, a contract killing and the 1993 slaying of Laurie Myles as she waited to pick up her daughter from Bible study.

“I truly feel that the danger to the public that uses the courtrooms in this county would greatly increase, and I could not guarantee the public’s safety if this case were sent to Van Nuys,” Fidler said after a brief hearing.

Sheriff’s deputies had complained that they could not handle the three-defendant high-security case in Van Nuys Courthouse while the trial of seven alleged members of the notorious Asian Boyz gang is proceeding in the same building.

Prosecutors Janice Maurizi and Edwin Greene said the move will hamper the job of Los Angeles Police Department and district attorney’s office investigators protecting witnesses and the prosecutors themselves. Greene said there is more likely to be an attempt to harm witnesses outside the courtroom and said authorities have already learned of at least one contract to kill a witness.

But even after hearing the police concerns in a closed-door hearing, Fidler said he still thought the trial of Etienne Moore, LaCedrick Johnson and Shashonee Solomon belongs downtown.

“I have to weigh the concerns of the people, in this case principally for witnesses, against the public safety,” Fidler said.

In retrospect, he said, the Asian Boyz case should not have remained in the Valley. “It has overtaxed the ability of the sheriff to protect that facility as well as we would like,” Fidler said. The defendants, who were charged with seven murders and 18 attempted murders, are also suspected in the mid-trial slaying of the father of the prosecution’s main witness.

Greene said Fidler’s comments appear to suggest that no future high-security trials will go to branch courts, where security is generally lower than in the Criminal Courts Building in Los Angeles.

Through a Superior Court spokeswoman, Fidler said that simply wasn’t true.

“He by no means meant to imply that all security cases should be heard downtown,” Jerrianne Hayslett said. “But the Asian Boyz gang case is so high risk that if he had to rethink that case, it would have to go downtown.”

Defense lawyers have complained that prosecutors just don’t want to face a downtown jury, which will almost certainly include blacks. All three defendants are black.

“What they’re interested in doing is having a Valley jury that’s more prone to give a death sentence,” said defense lawyer Michael Adelson.

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Prosecutors said the racial makeup of the jury is not an issue and pointed out that Myles, one of the murder victims, was black. Fidler refused to address the issue.

More important, Greene said, is the impact moving the case will have on more than 100 witnesses and alleged victims, all of whom live in the Valley and will now have to drive downtown for the trial. He said the family of both murder victims have said they would not be able to attend all of the six- to nine-month trial, as they would like, if it is held in downtown Los Angeles.

Defendants Moore and Johnson, both 24, of Canoga Park, are accused of a six-month crime spree in the west San Fernando Valley, involving about 30 separate crimes.

They are alleged to have robbed Myles at gunpoint, then fatally shot her in front of her 9-year-old son as they waited to pick up her 16-year-old daughter from Bible study. The 1993 case received wide public attention and rewards were publicized, but it was not solved for years.

Moore and Solomon are also accused of killing Talin Kara Tarhanian, Solomon’s former girlfriend. Authorities say Solomon asked Moore to kill the 20-year-old woman because he was angry at her for breaking up with him.

The case against Moore and Johnson was filed in San Fernando Court in 1995. It stayed in the Valley until 1996, when it was assigned downtown after a judge decided the trial would take up a valuable courtroom for too long.

Prosecutors argued to the then-supervising criminal judge that the case belonged in the Valley, citing the inconvenience to investigators, witnesses and victims and saying Valley residents had the right to judge crimes committed in their neighborhoods. The judge agreed.

The same arguments failed to convince Fidler on Friday, however.

He has assigned the case to Superior Court Judge J.D. Smith. It is set for trial Feb. 1.