Judge Overturns Man’s 1982 Murder Conviction : Courts: Prisoner received ineffective counsel, ruling says. Attorney general plans to appeal decision.

A federal judge has overturned the conviction of a man sentenced to life in prison 17 years ago for murdering a fellow rooming house resident by setting him afire in 1981.

U.S. District Judge Mariana R. Pfaelzer said in a written order that Billy Carl Turner had received ineffective counsel from the lawyer who represented him at his 1982 trial and during an appeal.

The state attorney general’s office said it will contest the ruling before the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Turner’s current lawyer, Mark McDonald, said he will file papers next week to have Turner freed on bail from the California Institution for Men at Chino pending further legal proceedings.

Turner took the stand in his own defense during the Los Angeles Superior Court trial and charged that the victim, Arthur Dennis Jr., was a violent bully who terrorized and sexually assaulted him. The two men lived in the same South-Central rooming house.

McDonald said that Turner’s trial lawyer, Andrew Smyth, failed to call as a witness a court-appointed psychiatrist who had examined Turner and concluded that the defendant lacked the ability to deliberate at the time of the slaying.

If the jury had accepted that assessment, Turner could not have been convicted of first-degree murder, McDonald said.

The attorney said Smyth also failed to present evidence about Dennis’ background, including a prior conviction for molesting one of his stepdaughters.

During an evidentiary hearing in federal court this year, another stepdaughter came forward and testified that Dennis had raped her numerous times over a 10-year-period starting when she was 7, McDonald said.

He said Dennis’ son told of being raped by his father when he was a boy and that Dennis allowed his male friends to abuse him while the father watched.

Reached at his office Friday, Smyth said “it was a tough case to win,” given the gruesome nature of the killing.

He said his principal mistake was allowing Turner to testify in his own defense. He said his client turned the jury against him when, in response to a prosecutor’s question, he refused to express any remorse for the killing.

McDonald, an attorney with the firm of Morrison & Foerster, has been representing Turner for the past 10 years in a pro bono capacity. He said he was handed the case while working at Hufstedler & Kaus, to whom Turner had written pleading for help. The firm’s co-founder, former California Supreme Court Justice Otto Kaus, found the letter intriguing, McDonald said.

Deputy State Atty. Gen. Victoria Bedrossian said Friday that she will appeal Pfaelzer’s ruling. She said the federal magistrate at the evidentiary hearing erred by allowing Turner’s legal team to present evidence that was not introduced when the case was being appealed through the state courts.