Movie on Teens’ Roles in Slaying to Debut

More than five years ago, the quiet Conejo Valley suburb of Agoura Hills was shocked by a backyard brawl among teenagers that resulted in the stabbing death of Jimmy Farris, the 16-year-old son of a Los Angeles police officer.

Today, a new feature-length documentary by an Oscar-nominated director is reviving questions about the controversial court case that followed. In it, three teenagers were convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, and a fourth, younger boy, also convicted of first-degree murder, was given 25 years to life, although only one youth admitted to the stabbing.

In director William Gazecki’s “Reckless Indifference,” which opens today, activist attorney Alan Dershowitz joins parents, defense attorneys and others in blasting the justice system for sentences Dershowitz calls “disproportional, outrageous, unconstitutional and immoral.”

“This is clearly not a case where the law was properly applied,” Dershowitz says in the film. “This is a manslaughter case.”

Judie Farris, the mother of the slain boy, said she is still too hurt by the crime to be able to analyze the fate of the defendants. The documentary, she said, has done little more than revive her pain. “It totally disrupts my life,” she said. “It brings back everything.”

Although only one boy apparently wielded the knife, all four were charged with first-degree murder under the felony murder rule that allows such charges to be brought if someone is killed during a serious crime, such as a robbery.

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State Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Los Angeles), who appears in the film interviewing one of the convicted youths, Brandon Hein, introduced a bill last year to require courts to tailor such sentences to a defendant’s role in a crime. The bill was voted down on the Senate floor.

Now the parents of the convicted youths, all four of whom are appealing their sentences, are hoping the film will bring more attention to their sons’ plight.

“It was nerve-racking, but emotionally satisfying [to watch],” said Brandon’s father, Gene Hein. “I think the movie shows the injustice of the whole situation.”

Gazecki, who was nominated for an Academy Award in 1998 for the documentary “Waco: The Rules of Engagement,” called his new film “compassionate without being knee-jerk liberal.”

“These kids were stupid and they were reckless,” he said. “But they were kids, and the system was equally as reckless.”

On May 22, 1995, five Conejo Valley youths aged 15 to 18 drove to an Agoura Hills home where teenager Mike McLoren was known to sell marijuana from a backyard fort. Four boys--Anthony Miliotti, Brandon Hein, and brothers Jason and Micah Holland--got out of the car with the intention of either stealing or buying McLoren’s pot.

The boys entered the fort, and a fistfight ensued involving Hein and the Holland brothers, as well as McLoren and his friend Jimmy Farris. Anthony Miliotti was standing in the doorway.

Jason Holland admitted to stabbing both Farris and McLoren. McLoren recovered; Farris died of the wounds.

Three defendants--Hein, Jason Holland and Miliotti--were sentenced to life terms in August 1996. The jury found they acted with “reckless indifference,” a special circumstance that ruled out the possibility for parole.

The fourth, Micah Holland, received a sentence of 25 years to life, the maximum he could receive as a 15-year-old. The fifth boy, Chris Velardo--who stayed in the car during the fight--pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and was given 11 years in prison.

Before the sentencing, Malibu Municipal Judge Lawrence J. Mira noted that the boys, on the afternoon of the incident, had gone on a deliberate crime spree that included stealing a wallet from a woman’s van and later verbally assaulting her.

But Dershowitz and others in the film take issue with some of the prosecutors’ key tactics--trying the boys as adults, arguing that the boys acted together as part of a gang, and arguing that the boys went to the fort with the intent to commit a robbery.

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Critics in the film--which today begins a limited seven-day run for Oscar consideration at Laemmle’s Grande 4-Plex downtown--assert that the victim’s father, Jim Farris, a Los Angeles Police Department officer, had undue influence on the case. And in the wake of the O.J. Simpson trial and other perceived failures by the district attorney’s office, they say, prosecutors were under intense political pressure to get convictions at any cost.

Judie Farris, who appears in the film, disputes these two claims and has taken the criticism of the trial from the convicted youths’ parents personally.

“All the blame they put on us is because they can’t face the facts,” she said.

“Almost everything the criminals’ families say [in the documentary] is wrong,” she said.

Producer Dale Rosenbloom, whose Utopia Pictures film company financed the documentary, said filmmakers did their best to offer a balanced view. “Though [Farris] may not agree, there weren’t any lies, and in every single [claim], there’s a rebuttal from the Farris family or the prosecution.”

In the film and in person, prosecutors deny they were influenced by politics, or that Jim Farris was shown any special deference.

Jeff Semow, one of the prosecutors, said he has not seen the film, but was surprised to learn that Gazecki did not mention that the prosecution was ready to offer a deal to the four defendants, and swap lesser charges for guilty pleas--thus avoiding such harsh penalties.

Attorneys for Miliotti and Hein rejected overtures for a plea bargain, Semow said, while the attorneys for the Holland brothers, by their “adversarial posture,” let it be known that they were not going to deal.

“Let me put it this way: The first thing any defense attorney does if they’re looking for anything short of going to trial is to ask [prosecutors], ‘Is there some level at which we can settle this case?’ ” Semow said, adding that attorneys for the Hollands never asked.

“Nobody wants to acknowledge that,” Semow said.

Gazecki called the plea bargain issue a “red herring” that detracts from the real story. “I appreciate Mr. Semow’s attempt to discuss his own actions as to what could have happened before the trial, but the story is about what happened during the trial,” he said.

Judie Farris said viewing the film was extremely difficult, opening old wounds she is trying to heal. She said she doubts any good will come from it.

She also said she is simply incapable of judging whether the defendants’ sentences were too harsh.

“I can’t even go there,” she said. “‘Just like people can’t feel the feelings of my son’s death.”

At the time of the sentencing, her husband asked for the maximum sentences for the defendants.

Today, Gene Hein hopes the film will help raise awareness of the plight of his son, now 23 and serving time at the California Correctional Institution at Tehachapi. Hein and others maintain an informational Web site, www.brandonhein.com. And on Nov. 2, blues guitarist Jonny Lang will play a benefit concert for Hein at the Key Club in West Hollywood.

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Gene Hein also sees the film as helping him spread the message he has been taking to youth groups and schools: that teenagers should be aware that their frivolous or thoughtless actions can sometimes have dire consequences.

Producer Rosenbloom, who provided all of the funding for the documentary, said filmmakers were drawn to both the legal issues and the setting of the crime--a sleepy suburb that, like many suburbs, appears placid only on the surface.

“We got into this to give an overview of where we are in middle-class American life at the turn of the century, and it’s scary,” Rosenbloom said. “You think when you move your family to a place like Agoura [Hills] that you’re going to escape gangs, drugs and violence. But that’s not the case.”