New Trial Ordered in Slayings of 2

A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge on Monday granted a new trial for convicted double-murderer Kenneth Leighton, ruling that his rights were violated when a prosecutor allegedly hid evidence from the defense.

Judge Terry A. Green repeatedly castigated Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael Duarte for having engaged in “prejudicial misconduct” during the capital murder trial of Leighton and co-defendant Randall Williams. The veteran prosecutor faces a contempt hearing next month for the same alleged conduct. He is accused of directing a law clerk to revise notes she had taken of an interview with a key prosecution witness.

Duarte declined to comment. But his private attorney, Harland Braun, said: “Mr. Duarte did not do anything wrong. . . . This is a whole lot of nothing.”

Leighton and Williams are charged in the 1998 West Hills shooting deaths of Jamie Navaroli and April Mahoney. Leighton was convicted on May 22. Williams also faces a new trial because his separate jury could not reach a verdict.

Defense lawyers for Leighton and Williams said Green made the right decision. “We feel that the court really considered everything fairly,” said Deputy Alternate Public Defender Linda Wieder, whose office represents Leighton. “I’m glad that the judge wanted to see that justice is done.”

A spokeswoman for Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley’s office, Sandi Gibbons, said prosecutors were disappointed by Green’s ruling, “but we’re confident we’ll prevail at retrial.” She added that the office could not comment about Duarte “because that’s a personnel matter.” Motions for new trials are routinely made but rarely prevail, legal experts said.

A judge will grant such a motion only when circumstances are “very extreme, very prejudicial to the defendant,” said Laurie Levenson, a criminal law professor at Loyola Law School and a former prosecutor. In this case, Levenson added, the fact that the court has to hold a new trial anyhow for Williams probably “made the remedy of the new trial more attractive” to the judge.

Green’s ruling marks the second time that a judge has ordered a new trial for a defendant after finding that Duarte had failed to fully disclose evidence.

Last year, another judge made such a decision in the murder trial of Olympic boxer Henry Tillman. The judge in that case cited prosecutorial misconduct as grounds for a mistrial. Tillman later pleaded guilty to charges of attempted murder and voluntary manslaughter.

Leighton’s new trial is expected to begin in a few months.

Navaroli and Mahoney were witnesses against Leighton in an unrelated burglary case. Prosecutors alleged that Leighton enlisted his friend Williams to kill the couple to keep them from cooperating with authorities. Defense attorneys contended that Leighton and Williams were innocent and that the couple had other enemies who wanted them dead.

In May, the trial was thrown into upheaval when Duarte’s own law clerk reported that the prosecutor instructed her to revise her notes from the witness interview, and that Duarte then gave the altered notes to defense lawyers without disclosing the changes. The judge found that some of the alterations were harmful to the defense.

Duarte has said that the clerk, Jennifer Blair, was new to the case and that her notes contained inaccuracies he had to correct.

But a judge who presided over the case before Green, Van Nuys Superior Court Judge Darlene Schempp, had ordered Duarte to turn over unaltered notes to the defense.

During jury instruction, Green gave jurors written copies of statements that had been omitted from the notes and told them that the prosecutor’s concealment “was without lawful justification.”

On Monday, Green said: “It is disturbing, very disturbing to me, that in a case where [prosecutors] seek to have the defendants executed . . . [Duarte] kept from the defense a statement that could have seriously impeached” the witness’ credibility.

The misconduct allegations against Duarte prompted the district attorney’s office to drop its bid for the death penalty in the Leighton and Williams case, a decision made shortly after the trial ended.

Duarte, once one of the top trial attorneys in the elite Major Crimes division, was recently reassigned to a unit that handles school truancy problems and misdemeanor prosecution of parents.

Though represented in his contempt hearing by appellate lawyers from the district attorney’s office, Duarte has also retained Braun. As a defense attorney during the Rampart police corruption trial, Braun repeatedly butted heads with Duarte’s prosecutor colleagues and at one point even called them “pond scum.”

Braun said he intends to prove during Duarte’s contempt hearing next month that the controversy over Duarte’s conduct arose out of a “long-standing feud” between Duarte and other prosecutors who “stabbed him in the back.”

In court, Braun and the appellate attorneys from the district attorney’s office contended that Green was not impartial and asked the judge to recuse himself from the contempt hearing. Green refused.

“I have an obligation to handle cases assigned to me,” Green said. Duarte’s contempt hearing is scheduled for Sept. 14.