Court Reviewing Sentence of Death

The Superior Court jury had little trouble recommending that Los Angeles street gang member Adam Miranda be put to death.

Jurors viewed him on videotape killing an Eagle Rock store clerk and wounding another employee in a 1980 robbery. They also heard him testify that he shot the victims because they were rude.

Later, during the trial’s penalty phase, the prosecution’s key witness testified that he saw Miranda murder a Frog Town neighborhood drug dealer by stabbing him in the face 11 times over a $10 dispute. Jurors took 40 minutes to decide Miranda should die.

Two decades later, the California Supreme Court is reconsidering Miranda’s death sentence based on defense allegations that Los Angeles County prosecutors--including Lance Ito, who went on to fame as the judge in the O.J. Simpson murder trial--engaged in misconduct.

The high court recently directed a San Diego judge to sit as a special master to determine whether the deputy district attorneys failed to disclose crucial evidence that they had obtained well before the 1982 trial. The evidence was an October 1980 handwritten letter by a County Jail inmate saying penalty phase witness Joseph Saucedo admitted to him from an adjoining cell that he--not Miranda--stabbed the drug dealer.

U.S. Supreme Court rulings require prosecutors to disclose to defense lawyers any material they have that would help discredit the testimony of a witness or help prove innocence.

While stopping short of saying the letter was deliberately withheld, the special master, Roger W. Krauel, ruled in late May that defense lawyers never received it from the prosecution.

The high court justices now will use Krauel’s finding to help determine whether the death sentence for Miranda, now 42, should be reversed.

The letter would have been “positively radioactive” for Saucedo’s credibility while testifying before the jury, said George Hedges, Miranda’s current lawyer. He said it could have dissuaded the jury from sentencing Miranda to die, because Saucedo was the only witness to provide a compelling and complete firsthand account of the grisly second murder.

Ito, now a Superior Court judge, said ethics rules prohibit him from commenting on pending cases. But in court papers he said he clearly remembers the letter, and in testimony before Krauel he agreed it should have been turned over to Miranda’s lawyers. But he could not recall whether he did. Ito said he had an open file policy at the time that allowed defense lawyers to freely examine the prosecution file.

Lawyers for the state attorney general, who are representing the district attorney’s office, minimize the importance of the letter. They argue, among other things, that it is hearsay and does not prove Saucedo actually admitted to the killing.

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Conflicting Statements

Although the letter appears on its face to clear Miranda of the drug dealer’s killing, police also collected statements from witnesses and informants that implicated Miranda or Saucedo or both but were never introduced at trial.

Moreover, six months after he was sentenced to die for the shooting of store clerk Gary Black, 33, Miranda struck an agreement with prosecutors in which he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the drug dealer’s killing. His lawyer says he would have never agreed to the deal if he had known about the letter.

Miranda’s case is now in its fifth post-trial review by state appellate courts. It is also being reviewed in federal court.

The California Supreme Court is being asked by Miranda’s lawyers to reverse the death penalty decision because without the letter, they say, he did not receive a fair trial during the penalty phase.

If the sentence is reversed and prosecutors decide to retry the penalty phase, they might have an uphill battle. In 83% of such cases, defendants are not resentenced to death, either because the prosecution chooses not to seek it or the jury doesn’t return a death verdict.

The case’s twisted legal path began Sept. 27, 1980, when Black was shot and killed. Miranda and a co-defendant were arrested soon after. Miranda and Saucedo, who was not involved in the store clerk’s shooting, were also charged with the Sept. 13, 1980, stabbing death of drug dealer Robert L. Hosey, 20.

Ito was the initial prosecutor in both cases, which moved through the court system separately.

The crucial handwritten letter came to Ito’s attention a few weeks later when an LAPD detective received it from a jailer and identified inmate Larry Montez as the author, according to the detective’s court declaration. He said he turned it over to Ito, who placed it in a manila envelope and put it in the prosecution’s case file.

In the letter, Montez said Saucedo told him that he had stabbed Hosey, threw the knife into the Los Angeles River and had arranged for his girlfriend to tell police he was with her at a movie.

In February 1981, the Hosey charges against Miranda were dismissed after a preliminary hearing for lack of evidence, leaving Saucedo the lone defendant.

Prosecutors, armed with the Montez letter, gathered statements from additional inmates implicating Saucedo in Hosey’s death. But Ito still wanted to prosecute Miranda for Hosey’s killing.

On Aug. 8, 1981, he met with Saucedo. To get Saucedo to testify against Miranda in the Hosey killing, Ito struck a deal allowing Saucedo to plead guilty to assault with a deadly weapon in exchange for probation, according to a transcript of that meeting.

The district attorney’s office then refiled charges against Miranda in the Hosey killing. Meanwhile, the case against Miranda for killing Black was continuing to move toward trial.

Because of a conflict of interest, Ito withdrew from the case. A second prosecutor, Frederick Horn, also withdrew, because of a death in his family.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Curtis A. Hazell then successfully tried the case. Miranda was convicted July 16, 1982, of shooting the store clerk during an attempted robbery, which made him eligible for either the death penalty or life in prison without parole.

Miranda’s accomplice, also convicted, was sentenced to life without parole. But for Miranda, the district attorney’s office wanted the death penalty, and Saucedo and the Hosey killing would help get it.

Hazell used Saucedo’s testimony to argue that Miranda deserved to die because not only had he killed the store clerk, he had also committed the second murder, the Hosey slaying, just two weeks earlier.

Saucedo testified that he saw Hosey getting beaten up and that Miranda, using Hosey’s knife, stabbed him repeatedly. Saucedo said he tried to stop Miranda but gave up when Miranda mistakenly stabbed him in the hand.

During cross-examination, Miranda’s attorney tried to discredit Saucedo by questioning his plea bargain and by asking other questions that implied he may have killed Hosey, according to court papers. But the defense did not substantially weaken Saucedo’s story, the Supreme Court said in a summary of the case.

In his closing arguments, Hazell said that if there had been any evidence that Saucedo had killed Hosey, defense lawyers would have submitted it.

Hazell was right, says Joe Ingber, Miranda’s attorney at the time. Unfortunately, the evidence was withheld from him by the district attorney’s office, Ingber says.

“If we had been given the Montez letter, we sure as hell would have made a frontal attack on [Saucedo],” Ingber said. “Armed with this letter, we could have taken away the prosecution’s only piece of evidence in the penalty phase against Mr. Miranda: the murder of Mr. Hosey.”

Ingber said the prosecution also withheld other information that may have been useful against Saucedo, such as a $1,350 payment for expenses, an agreement to relocate him, and several other statements police had collected from witnesses implicating Saucedo in the stabbing.

As for Ito’s open file policy allowing defense attorneys to examine the prosecution’s case file, Ingber said he had never heard of such a policy, and Ito never notified him of it.

Hazell said in an interview that he did not know about the Montez letter at the time of the trial, and that he would have turned it over if he had. Hazell said that when he was assigned to the case, he assumed his two predecessors had provided Ingber with everything he was entitled to.

His predecessor Horn, now an Orange County Superior Court judge, said he didn’t remember the Montez letter either, according to court papers filed by the attorney general’s office.

After the jury recommended that Miranda be executed, Saucedo was put on probation, in keeping with his plea deal.

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Accepted Plea Bargain

Six months later, largely because of the apparent effectiveness of Saucedo’s testimony against him in the death penalty phase of the store clerk’s murder trial, Miranda accepted the advice of his lawyer to plead guilty to second-degree murder in the Hosey killing, according to court papers filed by the defense.

“At the time it was a very favorable plea,” the lawyer, Albert Garber, said in an interview. “There was no point in going to trial on it and risk getting him a second death penalty.

“A significant factor in my decision to advise Mr. Miranda to plead guilty was the testimony produced during the penalty phase of the [store-clerk murder] trial,” he said.

Garber said he would never have given that advice had he known about the Montez letter. Miranda is now also using the Montez letter and other arguments in another appeal seeking permission to withdraw the Hosey plea.

Garber and Ingber say they didn’t learn about the Montez letter until six years ago, when Miranda’s appellate lawyers discovered it when a federal court ordered prosecutors to hand over their file.

With the special master’s ruling on the Montez letter before the California Supreme Court, Deputy Atty. Gen. David Glassman, who represents the district attorney’s office, said he is ready to defend the jury’s death verdict.

“We are now preparing to address remaining issues,” he said. Those issues include whether the letter would have been admissible in court and whether it would have changed the jury’s penalty decision, Glassman said.

He said many questions about the letter have to be resolved, including whether Montez really wrote it and whether it is truthful.