Defense shifts blame in death

In an eleventh-hour shift in defense strategy, one of two septuagenarian women charged in a hit-and-run murder case turned on her co-defendant Monday, a move some legal experts said could backfire.

Roger Jon Diamond, who represents Helen Golay, 77, told jurors shortly before they began deliberating that co-defendant Olga Rutterschmidt, 75, conspired with Golay’s daughter Kecia in the 2005 slaying of Kenneth McDavid.

“Maybe Olga had different plans, maybe Olga had her own scheme, unknown to Helen Golay, to have these people killed,” Diamond told jurors in his closing arguments.

In his arguments last week, Deputy Public Defender Michael Sklar, Rutterschmidt’s attorney, blamed McDavid’s killing on Golay. Authorities say Golay and Rutterschmidt lured McDavid, 50, and Paul Vados, 73, both homeless, off the streets, sheltered them for two years and ran them over with a car to collect $2.8 million in life insurance.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Robert Grace, visibly delighted with the turn of events, grinned as Diamond ticked off evidence he said incriminated Rutterschmidt, including records of calls from her phone to a number registered to Kecia Golay on the night of McDavid’s murder. Prosecutors say the phone actually belonged to Helen Golay.

“Mr. Diamond has previewed some of what I’m going to say to you,” Grace told jurors in his rebuttal to the defense.

In remarks outside court, Grace said Diamond’s approach “made the argument easier” for prosecutors.

Experts said the finger-pointing could be damaging for both women, whose long history of betrayal and back-stabbing emerged throughout the trial.

“To the extent that one co-defendant is suggesting the guilt of another, that suggestion is doing some of the prosecutor’s work for him,” said Diane Marie Amann, a UC Davis law professor who is now a visiting professor at UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall.

Grace repeatedly emphasized that both defense attorneys had admitted that McDavid was murdered. Officials originally classified the death as a hit-and-run accident.

Legal experts called the admission a gamble that could either make the women appear more credible by conceding some of the prosecution’s strongest evidence. Or the admission could make it easier for the jury to convict them.

“It’s the dream because you have the defendants basically convicting each other out of their own mouths,” Loyola Law School professor Stanley A. Goldman said.

Also on Monday, Diamond filed motions requesting that Golay be granted a separate trial, arguing that Sklar’s “antagonistic defense” was undermining his client’s chance for a fair hearing. Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge David S. Wesley denied the motion, noting that Diamond had agreed to a joint trial before the proceeding started.

“If you want to blame her [Rutterschmidt] for everything, you’re welcome to do it, that’s why we have two lawyers,” Wesley told Diamond when the jury was excused.

In filing the severance motion at this juncture, experts said, Diamond was making a record so he can raise the issue on appeal if necessary.

“You’re preserving the possibility that some appellate court will rule that he should have been granted that motion,” said Peter L. Arenella, a UCLA law professor and expert on criminal procedure.

Earlier in the trial, Diamond argued that the insurance companies were colluding with prosecutors and distorting the evidence because they had a financial interest in the women’s convictions.

On Monday, Diamond dismissed Sklar’s contention that Rutterschmidt was stupid and working under Golay’s direction, thinking that their plot was merely insurance fraud. Rutterschmidt was “intelligent” and was “intimately involved in the scheme,” Diamond argued.

Grace, in the rebuttal, called the arguments by both defense attorneys “conjecture and speculation with no basis but their imaginations.”

The two women were the “worst of the worst,” Grace said, asking jurors not to be affected by sympathy for the women because of their age and appearance. Golay and Rutterschmidt targeted homeless people that were in need of help, “men who were invisible in our society,” Grace said.

“They got, not help, but a noose from these defendants,” Grace told jurors.

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victoria.kim@latimes.com