Both Sides in Night Stalker Trial Allege ‘Group Bias’

Defense and prosecution lawyers in the impending Night Stalker trial have accused one another of systematically excluding people of certain races from serving on the jury.

The allegations, made late Thursday afternoon, forced Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Michael A. Tynan to order the lawyers back to court this morning to argue over the charges.

If either side is unable to refute the charges, Tynan may have to declare a mistrial, which would force jury selection for the long-delayed case to begin anew.

The defense is alleging that co-prosecutors Phil Halpin and Alan Yochelson have systematically excluded black women and Latinos from the jury.

The deputy district attorneys are alleging that Daniel Hernandez, defendant Richard Ramirez’s lawyer, has systematically excluded Anglos and Asians.

The development is unusual because lawyers usually never have to explain why they have excused prospective jurors while exercising routine “peremptory” challenges. It is even more unusual for both sides to make such allegations of racially motivated exclusion in picking a jury.

Typically, a lawyer uses a peremptory challenge only when he believes a juror may be biased against him or his client. State law defines such a challenge as one for which “no reason need be given.

After the charges surfaced Thursday, Tynan said from the bench that “the numbers require me to hold a hearing,” referring to the alleged number of jurors who might have been excused by the lawyers because of ethnicity.

The jury now has six Latinos and five blacks. A sixth black juror was excused for misconduct Tuesday for having said he would not condemn a Latino to die because there already is a disproportionate number of minorities on the nation’s Death Row.

Alternate Jury

Thursday’s allegations of “group bias” arose during the selection of a 13-member alternate jury, one of whom would be picked at random as the 12th juror. The trial, set to start Jan. 30, may take up to two years.

The issue of group bias was the subject of a landmark 1978 California Supreme Court ruling that such systematic exclusion “violates the right to trial by a jury drawn from a representative cross-section of the community” under the state Constitution.

In that case, known as People vs. Wheeler, the court said that if a trial judge finds credible evidence of group bias, the party accused of discriminating must prove that its peremptory challenges had not been “predicated on group bias alone.”

Such reasons have to be “very specific and factual,” one prominent defense lawyer said Thursday.

If such a showing cannot be made, the trial judge must then declare a mistrial, according to the People vs. Wheeler decision.

In that case, an all-white jury had convicted two black men of murdering a white grocer during a robbery. The high court examined the trial record and found that the men’s defense attorneys had made “a prima facie showing” that the prosecution had exercised its peremptory challenges against black jurors “on the ground of group bias alone.” The court then reversed the convictions and ordered a new trial.

Ramirez, a Latino drifter from El Paso, Tex., is accused of murdering 13 Los Angeles County residents in a spree of nighttime residential attacks that left many others injured. He also faces 30 additional felony counts here--as well as a 14th murder charge in San Francisco and attempted murder and sexual assault counts in Orange County.

Ramirez has been held in Los Angeles County Jail since he was captured by citizens in East Los Angeles on Labor Day Weekend in 1985. Jury selection in the case began July 21.