Admission Stuns Accused Killer’s Backers : Students, Faculty Rocked by Professor’s ‘Diminished Capacity’ Defense

When Richard L. Smith was first arrested in connection with the 1984 murder of his girlfriend’s ex-husband, few of his friends, colleagues and students believed the popular and respected Cal State Fullerton professor could have killed someone.

They believed in his innocence to the extent that more than 75 of them banded together to pay $75,000 in attorney fees and to post $200,000 bail. Some even put up equity in houses to get him out of jail.

That faith remained strong even as friends attending the trial before Superior Court Judge John J. Ryan heard Deputy Dist. Atty. Tom Avdeef present the prosecution’s case that a love triangle had led Smith to kill Donald Lee Matters, the estranged husband of Smith’s girlfriend and former student, Consuelo Matters, 39, of Tustin.

Thus, many of them were not prepared for what amounted to an admission by Smith that he had shot Matters, 38, a construction worker, outside the victim’s condominium in Orange on the morning of May 3, 1984. That revelation came in the third week of the trial as defense attorney Gary Proctor began to present his case.

Although Smith pleaded not guilty to murder charges, under Proctor’s defense strategy Smith is now saying that he committed the crime but acted in a state of diminished responsibility. This, Proctor said, raises the contention that Smith’s mental state was impaired at the time of killing and would make him, at most, guilty of involuntary manslaughter if he is convicted.

Psychiatric experts have testified for the defense that Smith, 44, a former head of the university’s philosophy department, is a chronic paranoid schizophrenic whose contact with reality is very poor and who often lives in a fantasy world.

History of Mental Disorders

They have also cited Smith’s long history of mental disorders, which date back to 1967 and have resulted in numerous hospitalizations, as evidence of his impaired condition.

The reaction among Smith’s supporters to all this has been varied. Some still stand behind him as they did in the beginning, although they are dismayed at the recent revelations. Others have simply withdrawn.

“I feel shocked that he could have done it,” said Dr. Corrin Wood, a professor of anthropology and a friend of Smith for several years. Wood has now withdrawn the equity in her house that she and her husband put up toward Smith’s bail. “It was my assumption from Day 1 that he was totally innocent.”

Wood said she never asked Smith, “ ‘Did you kill him?’ because it was my assumption that he did not. We talked about the case, but only in the sense of how difficult it was to find evidence and how difficult it was to prove that someone did not do something.”

As much as she is bothered by Smith’s admitting that he shot Matters, Wood said she is more upset that she and other friends and associates were not told about it beforehand.

“What boggles me is that if the psychiatrists and the lawyers knew about this, why didn’t we?” she said.

At one time, when Smith needed a place to live after he was freed on bail, Wood put him up at her house.

“I brought him into my house and I had my grandchildren over,” she said. “But that is something I wouldn’t have done if I’d had any inkling at all that he’d killed the man.

“I’m really bothered by the legal ethical procedure here because there doesn’t seem to be any procedure for caring for the people on the outside. Some people knew this and some other people should have been told,” she said.

When Wood withdrew her portion of the bail last week, it was made up by Dr. Craig Ihara, who was the chairman of philosophy department when Smith was arrested.

While Ihara said he was “shocked to find out the extent of (Smith’s) delusions,” he will continue to support his colleague.

“The Richard Smith I’ve known is a responsible and conscientious person who is not a threat to anyone,” Ihara said. “I continue that confidence.”

‘Very Intense’

Ihara described Smith, who joined the Fullerton faculty in 1971, as “very intense, kind and passionate. He tends to focus down and be very dogged in pursuit of some cause of the other. That’s why he functions so well.”

Smith’s teaching evaluations were always very high, Ihara said, and “he took a lot of interest in his students.”

Ihara also said Smith was outspoken in his opposition to violence “and I believe that was all sincere. That’s why for him to resort to violence is an indication of the extreme degree of pressure and delusion he was under. It was well out of character.”

Ihara said that while some of Smith’s associates “had known his history of breakdowns, we had no idea they were as extreme as they turned out. We all knew that there was some possibility that he might have committed the crime in a psychotic state, but we didn’t think it likely.”

Acting on God’s Orders

Although there has been testimony that Smith had believed several years ago that he was the target of a CIA plot, and that more recently he was acting on God’s orders when he killed Matters, Ihara said such problems never manifested themselves while he was at the university.

“Some people have a hard time understanding why we would not turn someone like this in,” Ihara said. “But a schizophrenic can behave quite normally and he certainly wasn’t running around the halls raving about these things.

“In fact, it’s the support that friends and colleagues have given him that has allowed him to compensate for his problems.”

To Ihara, “the core of the person I knew, a very compassionate person, that’s still there. It’s not a facade.”

Dr. Frank Verges, a member of the philosophy department since 1970, echoed Ihara’s assessment, saying that Smith “was always obsessive about what he got involved in. He was a good teacher and a good researcher who always pushed himself to the limit.”

‘Mild Mannered, Humble’

In his dealings with Smith, Verges said he found his colleague “very mild mannered, humble. But he is a workaholic. He’s not a person who can kick back and relax.”

Verges said that he had participated in the fund-raising efforts for Smith because he thought that “he certainly deserved a fair trial and to be represented by a good attorney.”

“In terms of my opinion of Richard, that’s complicated because it depends on whether I think he’s insane. I’m horrified by this act which he did . . . but I don’t know to what extent he knew he was doing it,” he said.

Dr. Julian Foster, a political science professor, said that in conversations with Smith about the case before it went to trial, Smith “was calm and confident of acquittal. He didn’t protest too much, he just said quietly that these miscarriages of justice happen, but it would all come out.

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“It’s inconceivable to me that someone as nervous and highstrung as he is could put up that kind of calm front,” he said. “I don’t believe he could have been conning us consciously about it. Now I guess I have to say I’m convinced that at that time he didn’t know he did it.”

Because Smith has been on administrative leave since he was arrested just hours after Matters’ killing, he has not taught at the university since 1984. Most students interviewed recently at the campus were not there two years ago and their only exposure to Smith has been through stories about the trial that appear daily in the school newspaper.

Dan Trotta, a senior who is editor of the Daily Titan, said the coverage has been extensive “because it’s our No. 1 news story. It’s something that has nearly the impact of the Cooperman story.”

(Edward Lee Cooperman, 48, was killed in his office at the Fullerton campus Oct. 13, 1984. Minh Vin Lam, 21, a student, admitted shooting the physics professor, but said the gun he was holding went off accidentally when Cooperman grabbed his arm to show him how to the aim the weapon. Lam’s first trial ended in a deadlocked jury, but he was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter at a second trial and sentenced to three years in prison.)

“It’s kind of funny how things happen,” Trotta said. “Here we have two sensational murders back-to-back. Some of the students are so stunned and when they read about it, they say: ‘Oh, wow.’ Some now say he was kind of weird, where they didn’t say that before.

“It’s strange, the range of emotions in people’s reaction. They read about this sort of thing all the time and think nothing of it because it hasn’t happened close to them. But now it has.”