Jurors Urge Death Penalty for Ramirez

After four days of deliberations, jurors recommended Wednesday that Texas drifter Richard Ramirez be sentenced to death for the Night Stalker murders, a rampage of savage, Satanic-tinged slayings that haunted Southern California in the summer of 1985.

“We the jury . . . fix the penalty therefore at death,” Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Michael A. Tynan read aloud 19 times, the number of special circumstances attached to felony convictions that included multiple murders, burglary and sex crimes.

Spectators gasped as the first death penalty was recommended.

The solemn-faced jury was the same panel that last month found Ramirez guilty of 13 murders and 30 other felonies. The only alternatives available to the panel were death or life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Deliberations had begun after both prosecution and defense declined to present witnesses in the so-called penalty phase of the trial. Ramirez’s attorneys had pleaded with the jurors to “show mercy,” while prosecutors argued that the Night Stalker should be given his “just deserts.”

Ramirez, a self-proclaimed devil worshiper, was clad in black from head to toe as he entered court to hear the sentence recommendation. He rattled his waist chains, turned several times to stare at the crammed courtroom and began rocking back and forth in his chair as Tynan repeated “death” again and again.

Afterward, as three bailiffs escorted him from the courtroom, he managed a slight smile.

“Hey, big deal. Death always went with the territory,” the 29-year-old El Paso, Tex., native said in a husky voice as he left the downtown criminal courts building in a sheriff’s van. “I’ll see you in Disneyland.”

One woman among the group of about 30 people who gathered to watch him depart, said: “He just blew us a kiss and smiled. It was funny, he didn’t look nervous. Maybe he just accepted it.”

Formal sentencing was scheduled Nov. 7.

Tynan could reduce the sentence to life without possibility of parole, but is unlikely to do so given the jury’s vote for death on all counts. Death sentences automatically are appealed to the state Supreme Court, and the appeals can be advanced to the U.S. Supreme Court, resulting in years of delays. No one has been executed in California for 22 years. There are 262 inmates on Death Row in San Quentin, where the state gas chamber is located. Eighty-five of the Death Row inmates were convicted in Los Angeles County.

No decision on whether to prosecute Ramirez in an Orange County attack will be made until after a Los Angeles judge acts on Wednesday’s jury decision calling for the death penalty, a spokesman for the Orange County district attorney’s office said.

Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. James G. Enright said the decision on whether to proceed with trial in the Mission Viejo attack hinges on the actions of Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Michael A. Tynan, who must either agree with the Los Angeles jury’s recommended death sentence or sentence Ramirez to life in prison instead. Tynan is expected to act Nov. 7.

Ramirez is charged with attempted murder and rape for allegedly breaking into the Mission Viejo home of William Carns on Aug. 25, 1985, shooting him three times in the head and raping his girlfriend.

Enright has said if Ramirez is sentenced to death, he may not prosecute him in the Mission Viejo case to spare Carns’ former girlfriend, the chief witness in the case, and save taxpayer dollars.

Courtroom spectators included sheriff’s deputy Andy Ramirez (no relation), who first handcuffed Ramirez four years ago after he was captured by East Los Angeles residents, and several survivors of his victims.

Tears streamed down the cheeks of Judith Arnold and Ellen Francis, daughters of Glendale murder victims Maxon and Lela Kneiding. When her parents’ names were read, Arnold placed her hand over her face and her shoulders heaved as she fought back sobs.

“The punishment fits the crime,” she said later. “It’s been a long, hard road.”

Prosecutors P. Philip Halpin and Alan S. Yochelson both sighed with relief that the long trial was over.

“These things (trials) are not contests,” Halpin said. “It has not been fun.”

He said he regretted not having gained more insight about Ramirez--”a twisted man but an intelligent fellow”--from the defense.

“It’s a tragedy not to see how this all happened,” Halpin said.

Defense attorney Daniel Hernandez said that “society should be saddened and sympathetic for anyone who is sent to death,” adding that that the question of whether Ramirez got a fair trial will be dealt with on appeal, which will likely be filed by a lawyer from the state public defender’s office or the California Appellate Project.

Co-counsel Ray G. Clark, who joined the defense team well into the trial, said that while homicide is a serious crime, “I could not condone taking even Hitler’s life.” He said he doesn’t know whether Ramirez is guilty or not: “I never asked.”

Jurors who spoke after the verdict expressed relief that their intense, eight-month involvement in the case was over. Some said they had suffered nightmares and spent sleepless nights over their impending decision.

They met briefly with Tynan after delivering the verdict. The judge thanked them for their work and presented them with a short letter. It praised their “extraordinary courage” and wished them “the best of everything that this life can bring to you and your families.”

Then they walked into a swarm of glaring television lights that packed the hallway, some quickly heading for the elevator and a prearranged party at the home of juror Shirley Zelaya, a postal employee. The jury had been banned from making comments to the press until after the penalty phase of the trial was concluded.

Jury foreman Felipe G. Rodriguez of El Monte, a 30-year-old city street-light installer who said he put bolts on his doors and windows while Ramirez was on the loose, said he had few qualms after finding Ramirez guilty or recommending death--although he would have liked to have heard from Ramirez himself on the witness stand.

“I feel I fulfilled my responsibility to society after his reign of terror,” he said. “It’s a just punishment. . . . As for sending a man to his death, that’s a spiritual thing I have to work out between God and myself. I feel he’s a human being that may have gotten sidetracked through his growing years and all I can say now is that he kind of wrote his own story.”

Rodriguez said the jury took 22 days to reach its guilty verdict and four days to reach a penalty verdict only because the panel thoroughly examined each count. He said after some discussion, members took a secret ballot and were generally unanimous about his guilt.

The clincher in the case against Ramirez, if there was one, was the discovery at a burglary of both an Avia shoe print that had been picked up at six other Stalker crime scenes and Ramirez’s palm print, Rodriguez said. These were detected at a Monrovia burglary and represented the only time both the shoe and a Ramirez print were found together. Ironically, he was not charged in the burglary.

Times staff writer Catherine Gewertz in Orange County contributed to this report.

JURY’S REACTION: The nightmares continue for some of the 12 jurors. Page 34