No death penalty for convict found guilty in 1979 rape, murder of Glendale woman
A man convicted of raping and murdering a Glendale woman in 1979 was spared the death penalty after a jury deadlocked Thursday on the third day of deliberations.
Ten jurors voted for Darrell Gurule to spend the rest of his life in prison, while two felt he should be executed.
The same jury convicted Gurule last month of killing Barbara Ballman, whose naked body, lying across the front seat of her Volkswagen Beetle, was found by fourth-graders on their way to Thomas Edison Elementary School one September morning in 1979.
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She’d been raped and killed by a single shotgun wound to her abdomen, shortly after leaving her older sister’s home, where she’d babysat her nephew before eating sweet rolls and watching Donna Summer with her sister.
“He took away her life, her future, her ability to walk around this planet, her dignity, and left her there to die alone,” said her sister Linda Benjamin, who filled 14 journals with notes to Ballman in the dozen or so years after her death. “There’s a place she should’ve been that she isn’t, and that can never be filled by anyone else.”
Prosecutors have not yet decided whether to retry Gurule or to accept a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole, according to the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office.
In seeking the death penalty, the prosecutor pointed to Gurule’s violent criminal history, which included a 1977 sexual assault at gunpoint, as well as a 1987 kidnapping and murder. When Glendale detectives linked him to Ballman’s death in 2004, he was already serving a life sentence for the 1987 crimes.
The mistrial marked the culmination of the roughly three-week penalty phase of the trial, during which defense attorneys reached back in time to find those who could attest to Gurule’s troubled upbringing in an abusive household.
An old neighbor who shared an Echo Park duplex with the Gurule family in the 1960s testified to hearing constant screaming and crying from upstairs. She’d see bruises on Gurule and his brothers, who were always hungry. Meanwhile, a social worker who handled the family’s case in the 1970s described it as among the top 10 worst of her six-year career.
A news reporter who wrote a 1973 newspaper article detailing how Glendale police found Gurule’s seven siblings – Gurule was in juvenile hall at the time – in a home alone, among rotting food, feces and overflowing toilets also testified. Gurule’s mother, who died in 1997, was on a date at the time.
“He didn’t have a chance. He didn’t have a fighting chance,” Gurule’s maternal aunt Lita Hopkins told the jury during the trial.
But in prison, defense attorneys argued, Gurule found Christianity and peace, and has for decades served as a model inmate.
“I think at the end of the day, our defense themes resonated,” said Philip Peng, an alternate public defender who represented Gurule. “I think the system worked.”
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Alene Tchekmedyian, alene.tchekmedyian@latimes.com
Twitter: @atchek
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