Sentence of Death for Killer Is Upheld : Court appeal: The state justices unanimously reject the defendant’s plea in a 12-year-old murder case.

SAN FRANCISCO —  The state Supreme Court, ruling in a 12-year-old murder case, upheld the death penalty Thursday for a defendant whose previous sentence was reversed because of questions about his mental fitness for trial.

The high court unanimously turned down an appeal from Douglas Ray Stankewitz, now 32, who was found guilty and condemned to die for the fatal shooting of a Modesto woman during a robbery and kidnaping in February, 1978.

Stankewitz had won a retrial in 1982 when the court, in a 4-2 ruling by then-Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird, held that he had been improperly denied a hearing on whether he was mentally incompetent to stand trial and assist in his own defense.

In Thursday’s decision, the high court refused to grant Stankewitz a third trial, rejecting a series of defense claims in a 73-page opinion by newly appointed Justice Armand Arabian, his first since joining the court in March.

Among other things, the court turned down Stankewitz’s contention that the jury should have been instructed to “view with distrust” the testimony of a young witness who was with the defendant and two adult accomplices when they abducted Theresa Greybeal, 22, in a store parking lot.

The boy, 14 at the time, was granted immunity. He testified that after the abduction, the group drove the woman’s car to Fresno in search of heroin. Later, in the nearby community of Calwa, he said he saw Stankewitz walk up to the victim, take careful aim and shoot her in the head.

After Greybeal fell to the ground, the boy said, Stankewitz turned to a confederate and said, “Did I drop her or did I drop her?” The confederate responded, “You dropped her,” as both men began to giggle.

The justices ruled that the boy’s involvement in the crimes had been “extremely limited” and that his testimony was not inherently suspect.

After his first conviction and death sentence were reversed by the high court, Stankewitz was retried in Fresno County and once again, the question of his mental competence was raised by the public defender representing him. As he had at his first trial, Stankewitz accused the public defender of conspiring with the prosecutor--a claim that a psychiatrist at the first trial said appeared to be a sign of paranoid delusion.

The trial judge appointed two psychiatrists to examine Stankewitz but he refused to communicate with either and asked for another lawyer to represent him. The judge appointed a private attorney to represent Stankewitz and allowed the case to proceed. Again, Stankewitz was convicted and sentenced to death.

Stankewitz’s lawyers on appeal contended that the judge, before naming a new attorney, should have suspended all proceedings and conducted a full-scale hearing to hear what they said was clear evidence that Stankewitz was not fit to be tried.

But the high court rejected that contention. “The only evidence that the defendant could not cooperate and assist in his defense was his delusion that the public defender was in collusion with the prosecutor,” Arabian wrote.

John P. Ward of Oakland, an attorney for Stankewitz, said he would ask the state Supreme Court for a rehearing and, if necessary, pursue the appeal in the federal courts.

Ward said he would contend also that Stankewitz, an American Indian, should have been tried in another county. “Where an Indian is tried in California has a substantial impact . . . and we believe there was substantial bias in Fresno County,” he said.