6 Jurors Urge Sparing Killer’s Life

Six jurors who condemned Michael Morales to execution for the brutal, 1981 slaying of a 17-year-old Lodi high school student on Tuesday urged Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to spare the death row inmate’s life.

In a surprising turn of events, the jurors sided with the trial judge in the case, who 12 days ago asked the governor to stop the Feb. 21 execution and commute Morales’ sentence to life in prison without parole. The judge and jurors cited the testimony of a jailhouse informant who they now say lied about Morales’ role in the murder.

“At the stage Mr. Morales now finds himself, there is one shining truth,” said Ben Weston, a spokesman for Morales’ clemency attorneys, “and that is that the jury to which he ‘conceded his guilt 23 years ago,’ and the judge who ultimately sentenced him to death, know that he should never have been sentenced to death.”

The jurors’ change of heart came in a 17-page letter submitted in reply to the San Joaquin County district attorney office’s case against clemency. The district attorney, in a letter to Schwarzenegger on Monday, argued that “the evidence that [Morales] tortured, raped and murdered Terri Winchell is overwhelming.”

Winchell was found beaten and stabbed in a secluded vineyard. Prosecutors argued that Morales committed the crime with a hammer and knife in an alcohol- and drug-induced haze at the request of his cousin, Rick Ortega, who was angry at Winchell because she had seduced his male lover.

In 1983, the 12-member jury unanimously convicted Morales, now 46, of killing Winchell. Ventura County Superior Court Judge Charles R. McGrath sentenced him to death.

A jailhouse informant, Bruce Samuelson, testified that Morales had bragged during a jailhouse conversation in fluent Spanish that he had planned to rape and kill Winchell.

The prosecutor’s file notes identified Samuelson as “a key witness” to prove both the homicide and the special circumstances warranting a death penalty, Morales’ attorneys said.

A decade after the trial, however, it was learned that Morales does not speak Spanish.

First McGrath, and on Tuesday the jurors, said they now believe that Samuelson lied and that Morales should be allowed to spend the rest of his life in prison. The jurors’ declarations were filed under seal and not available for public viewing, Weston said.

The six jurors -- a majority of those still living who heard the case -- declared that without the informant’s testimony, they never would have returned a verdict of death, Weston said.

The district attorney “cannot avoid this central fact: Because Samuelson could not have obtained the incriminating statements in the manner he claimed, it is indisputable that he did not obtain incriminating information from Mr. Morales at all,” Weston said. “His entire testimony at the trial was a lie.”

Morales’ lawyers -- David Senior and Kenneth W. Starr, dean of Pepperdine Law School and the special prosecutor in the impeachment proceedings against President Clinton -- also criticized prosecutors for relying on a statement from former San Joaquin Dist. Atty. Michael Platt, who said Morales was not remorseful after the killing.

“The prosecution failed to disclose to the governor,” Weston said, “that Platt had been a Superior Court judge until he was removed from the bench for several acts of unethical conduct, and further, that he was suspended from practicing law on Feb. 13, 2003.”

San Joaquin County Deputy Dist. Atty. Charles Schultz was unavailable for comment.

A spokeswoman for Schwarzenegger has said the governor would thoroughly review the matter.