Lawyer says weapon can clear his death-row client

Defense lawyer Scott Kauffman had just about given up. He and a team of geophysics experts had been scouring a field in Modesto for a day and a half last week in search of a weapon used 18 years ago to murder a man.

If they found the weapon, Kauffman believed, it would vindicate his client, death-row inmate Dennis Lawley. Lawley had been convicted of ordering the man’s murder in 1989 after a gun found in his home was identified by experts as the murder weapon.

The admitted hit man in the killing has said Lawley had nothing to do with the crime and that the real murder weapon was buried in the field.

Working off a Google map that the hit man had marked, Kauffman and his team combed the ground in bright sunshine with metal detectors. Each potential discovery yielded only a rusty beer can.

By Thursday afternoon, everyone had left the field except Kauffman. He decided to broaden the search by about 50 feet near a gully where the hit man said he had disposed of the weapon. Kauffman was not hopeful.

“I was by myself,” he said. “This is actually an indication of how little confidence I had that I was going to find something. I would have been more careful about having a whole crew with me.”

A detector sounded, indicating the presence of metal where Kauffman was searching. He pushed his shovel into the dirt a couple of inches and felt it hit something. He then lifted the shovel out with his foot, and a gun flipped out in front of him.

“This sort of calmness came over me,” Kauffman said. “I was astonished, but I knew instantly what it was.

” . . . I walked over to my car, put the video camera on a post, recorded what I was doing, then walked back and took photographs. I called my wife first, then I called the cops.”

On Friday, Kauffman filed an emergency motion with the California Supreme Court to present more evidence in Lawley’s case, which the court has scheduled for arguments on Jan. 9. Kauffman is arguing that there is enough evidence of Lawley’s innocence to grant a new trial.

The court on Monday asked the attorney general’soffice to respond to Kauffman’s new evidence, and the state Department of Justice began analyzing the weapon. The state has so far obtained a serial number from the gun and said it was consistent with a .357 Smith and Wesson, which the hit man has long contended he used in the crime, Kauffman said.

Deputy Atty. Gen. David Eldridge , who is arguing in favor of Lawley’s death sentence, downplayed the discovery Monday.

Chuckling, Eldridge said: “Mr. Kauffman informed us this weekend that he has stated that he found the gun in the field when apparently no one objective was around. He handed it over to the Stanislaus Sheriff’s Department. They have turned it over to the DOJ firearms personnel, and they are treating it like any other case in which someone says they found a gun in a field.”

The California Supreme Court gave Eldridge until Friday to respond to Kauffman’s claims. Eldridge said he did not know how long it would take to analyze the gun.

Lawley, 66, went to death row in 1990 after he represented himself during his trial for the slaying of Kenneth Lawton Stewart. A paranoid, delusional schizophrenic, Lawley said he was framed for the Stewart murder because he aspired to “go down in history” as the “Beast of Revelations.” He said he was fulfilling biblical prophecies so society could resist an effort to convert all heterosexuals into homosexuals and prepare for warrior space societies to come to Earth.

A decade earlier, Lawley had been found not guilty by reason of insanity for assaulting a police officer and had spent time at Atascadero State Hospital. But the judge in the 1989 murder trial found Lawley not only competent to stand trial but permitted him to direct his own defense. The California Supreme Court, reviewing the trial record in 2002, upheld that decision.

Stewart was killed four days after he was released from state prison, his body dumped on a country road outside Modesto. He had been shot in the back of the head..

After he left prison, Stewart hung around a mobile home park in Modesto known as Butler’s Camp, a collection of trailers and cabins frequented by drug dealers, ex-cons and prostitutes. Lawley lived at the camp.

Shortly before his death, Stewart robbed and assaulted Lawley. Witnesses later testified that Lawley had said he wanted to kill Stewart. One witness testified that he heard Lawley discussing a job he wanted done with two other men, and claimed he saw Lawley provide the men with a gun.

Lawley previously had been convicted of felony assault, burglary, perjury, possession of a controlled substance and being a felon in possession of a firearm.

Two weeks after Lawley’s arrest, Brian Seabourn, the hit man, also was arrested on suspicion of killing Stewart. He had told an associate that he killed Stewart on orders from the Aryan Brotherhood, a prison gang. In Seabourn’s car was a letter from the second-highest-ranking Aryan Brotherhood member at Folsom Prison.

While awaiting trial, Seabourn again repeated his story about killing for the Aryan Brotherhood, and a witness at his trial testified that he knew of the contract on Stewart.

Seabourn maintained his innocence at trial and insisted he had an alibi. He was convicted of second-degree murder.

Several years later, he gave up his Aryan Brotherhood membership and confessed to prison authorities that he murdered a man in Modesto at the gang’s behest. He also wrote a letter to the county district attorney saying that Lawley was not guilty of the crime. Lawley’s lawyers have argued that prosecutors in Modesto failed to turn over evidence during Lawley’s trial that would have pointed to the Aryan Brotherhood connection.

Disturbed by the allegations, the state Supreme Court appointed a trial judge to hear evidence of Lawley’s claims in 2004. The judge’s report, now before the court, rejected Lawley’s claim of innocence on the grounds that two experts linked the gun found in Lawley’s home to the murder.

Kauffman said the last federal expert to look at the gun said it was the most marginal match he had ever made, a “borderline” case.

The Modesto field where Seabourn said he buried the murder weapon was searched two decades ago. Kauffman said he asked the judge during the 2004 fact-finding hearing to have Seabourn taken to the 15-acre field to identify where he buried the gun. The judge refused.

Kauffman did not intend to search the field until Lawley’s mother called him in mid-October and offered to try to come up with money to look for the gun. After receiving funds for the search from the state Supreme Court, Kauffman hired the team of investigators to probe the field, which is plowed often and was flooded in the past.

“I just thought the likelihood of being able to find it was very low,” Kauffman said. “And the gun is not the whole case. I have proven that the Aryan Brotherhood ordered the killing of Stewart. The gun is the checkmate.

“We need to end this,” Kauffman said. “Dennis needs to be released from prison.”

maura.dolan@latimes.com