Defense Seeks Removal of Prosecutor in Hospital Rampage

Attorneys for the man accused of killing three people in a shooting rampage last year at West Anaheim Medical Center want Orange County Dist. Atty. Tony Rackauckas off the case because his father was a patient at the hospital shortly before the attack.

By calling on the state attorney general to take over the case, the public defender’s office is setting the stage for what legal experts say would be an unusual court hearing about when a prosecutor is too close to a case to handle it impartially.

Rackauckas’ 83-year-old father was discharged from the hospital two days before Dung Trinh allegedly shot three hospital employees to death in a terrifying attack that sent patients diving for cover, according to court records.

Defense lawyers said Rackauckas was shaken by his father’s near-brush with the killer and handled Trinh’s case much differently as a result, while not disclosing his family connection to the case.

Two days after the killings, Rackauckas held a news conference on the courthouse steps to announce that he was seeking the death penalty. The prosecutor also said he would seek to execute anyone else who committed a public killing under his watch.

Rackauckas said Thursday that he visited his father at the hospital a few days before the killings. But he said his decisions were based on the crime, not his family’s prior visits to the medical center.

“My father has been in a number of hospitals during the past two years. He’s having a very hard time. The fact that he spent three or four days at this particular hospital made no difference in my decision to seek the death penalty,” Rackauckas said. “My decision would be the same if this terrible incident occurred in any hospital in our county, or if my father had never been in this particular hospital.”

Rackauckas said he did not disclose his visit to the hospital sooner because he never considered it significant.

“It wasn’t something that had anything to do with the case,” he said.

But the head of Orange County’s public defender’s office disagrees.

“It is very clear that this decision was made abruptly and this case was handled differently than any capital case I’m aware of,” said Orange County Public Defender Carl Holmes.

Prosecutors routinely withdraw from cases involving family members as defendants or victims. Rackauckas recently stepped down from his adult son’s cocaine possession case. But legal experts are divided about whether Rackauckas is too close to the Trinh case.

“The coincidence of the father having been treated at the same hospital doesn’t move me,” said Santa Clara University law professor Gerald Uelman. “That’s a real stretch in trying to argue there’s any conflict for the D.A.”

Holmes said his attorneys will soon file a motion asking Judge Richard L. Weatherspoon to remove Orange County prosecutors from the case. He noted that Rackauckas abandoned a long-standing office policy in the Trinh case, failing to hold an informal hearing to discuss the death penalty issue with veteran prosecutors.