Jury That Convicted Deaf Slayer Deadlocks on Question of Sanity

SANTA ANA —  Jurors deadlocked Wednesday over the sanity of a deaf man convicted of fatally stabbing his girlfriend and her mother, saying they could not decide whether Ronald James Blaney knew what he was doing when he committed the crime, as the defense contended.

The Superior Court panel, which was charged with assessing Blaney’s sanity after convicting him of murder Oct. 3, deliberated a day and a half before announcing that it could not agree.

Foreman Carol Hazelwood, 54, of Irvine, said jurors voted 10 to 2 in favor of finding Blaney sane, but the evidence was so riddled with uncertainty and contradictions that they could not decide.

“We all agreed he had a mental defect,” Hazelwood said. “The question was whether it reached the legal definition of insanity.”

Attorneys said they now have three options: They can try the sanity phase again before a new jury, let Superior Court Judge Leonard H. McBride decide the matter, or come to an agreement about whether Blaney was sane, an option that eliminates the need for a sanity phase. They will discuss those options at a Friday meeting with McBride.

If Blaney, 32, is found sane, he faces an automatic sentence of life in prison without parole because of the jury’s earlier special findings of torture and multiple murder. The prosecutor did not seek the death penalty. If Blaney is found insane, he will be institutionalized, said Deputy Public Defender James S. Egar.

Egar presented evidence that Blaney suffered congenital brain defects because his mother had rubella when he was born and that he was emotionally unstable as gell. He argued that at the time of the murders, Blaney’s brain essentially overloaded and he could not control his violence.

The trial attracted the interest of the deaf community, drawing a daily crowd of about a dozen hearing-impaired spectators who used sign language to share their thoughts about the case. Blaney heard the case through a sign-language interpreter.

Blaney, a Fountain Valley man with a history of psychological problems, was convicted of torturing and stabbing his girlfriend, Priscilla Vinci, 33, and stabbing her mother, Josephine Vinci, 65, in the home the women shared on May 4, 1987.

Prosecutors said Blaney subjected the younger woman, who was also deaf, to exceptional punishment before killing her because she had wanted to cool their relationship to just a friendship.

Blood spatters in several rooms of the house and defensive wounds on the women’s hands indicated they had put up a struggle before collapsing. Blaney stabbed each woman more than a dozen times, alternating among a carving knife, a smaller kitchen knife and a fondue pick.

Blaney admitted that he was responsible for the stabbings and said that afterward, he showered in the women’s home and changed his bloody clothes.

Hazelwood said the panel’s job was thorny because the psychiatrist and psychologist who testified in the sanity phase gave conflicting testimony about Blaney’s mental state.

Hazelwood, who teaches English as a second language, said two jurors “thought nobody could have done what he did without being insane and unaware of his actions,” but the other 10 believed him sane.

Many of those 10 thought the “surgical” nature of the wounds he inflicted made it appear he was conscious of his actions, Hazelwood said. Others believed that the fact that he suffered no wounds made it seem he was not completely out of control, she said.