Prosecutors seek death penalty

Prosecutors will seek the death penalty for Juan Manuel Alvarez,

accused of murdering 11 people in the January Metrolink train

derailment, the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office announced in

court Friday.

A committee met Wednesday to go over the case, and the chairman of

the committee, Kurt Hazell, made the final decision, said Sandi

Gibbons, spokeswoman for the District Attorney’s Office. “It’s not a

popular vote,” she said. “But the committee discusses the case and

the chairman makes the final decision.”

Alvarez, a 25-year-old construction worker from Compton, is

charged with arson and 11 counts of murder with special circumstances

for allegedly parking his 1993 Jeep Cherokee on the train tracks near

Chevy Chase Drive and dousing it with gasoline, causing the

three-train wreck Jan. 26 that killed 11 people and injured nearly

200 others.

Police say witnesses saw Alvarez douse the Jeep in gasoline, drive

it onto the tracks, and then douse the inside of the truck, before

abandoning it there. A southbound Metrolink train smashed into the

Jeep, derailed hitting a parked locomotive and careened into a

northbound commuter train.

Alvarez pleaded not guilty in May to arson and 11 counts of

murder.

“I’m shocked,” said Rita Kay Tutino, whose husband James Tutino, a

Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputy, was killed in the crash. “I lost

my husband in that. I don’t know, I’m really speechless. I think it’s

very deserving. He intentionally put lives on the line.”

Alvarez’s attorney, Eric A. Chase, did not return calls for

comment.

But according to the court clerk, supervising Judge David Wesley

will be appointing a new attorney for Alvarez next week.

“His attorney was pro-bono,” said court clerk Alberta Canada.

“It’s expensive to do a death penalty case, and I believe they didn’t

have the resources to do it.”

If Alvarez is convicted, his trial will now proceed to a second

phase, where jurors will either sentence him to death, or life in

prison without the possibility of parole, Gibbons said.

“I guess I don’t have a whole lot to comment except that I’ll wait

to see if they really have enough evidence to convict him of that,”

said Ann Ormiston, whose husband Tom Ormiston, the conductor of the

southbound train, who was killed in the crash.

“I have my own personal feelings about the death penalty. I mean

don’t want to see anybody else die,” she said. “But I do believe he

is guilty and there was a lot involved out there.”

Alvarez will return to court Wednesday to see if a death penalty

lawyer has been appointed, Canada said.

* TANIA CHATILA

covers public safety

and courts. She may be reached at (818) 637-3232 or at

o7tania.chatila

@latimes.com.

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