O.C. Judge Decries Delay in Executing the ‘Deserving’

SANTA ANA —  Superior Court Judge Robert R. Fitzgerald was about to resume the bench after a lunch break one day when he was informed that Tommy Thompson’s death sentence had been upheld by the state Supreme Court.

“There is a God,” the judge remarked.

Thompson, convicted in 1981 of murdering a Mission Viejo woman, is one of six men Fitzgerald has sentenced to die in the gas chamber at San Quentin State Prison. No other judge in Orange County has sent more defendants to Death Row.

Fitzgerald calls those six condemned men his “basketball team.”

“I keep waiting for one of them to score some points,” he said.

Despite the gallows humor, the 55-year-old jurist said he sees only tragedy and frustration in the way capital cases are allowed to languish in the appellate system.

Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling designed to streamline some of the federal appeals by Death Row inmates in an effort to reduce the long wait between sentencing and execution. While Fitzgerald applauds that action, he said he has no hope of soon seeing the sentences carried out for the six he sent to Death Row.

“I only have five more years on the bench. I don’t think any of them will be finished with their appeals by then, which is tragic by itself,” he said.

Fitzgerald shared his views on capital punishment in a rare interview. Because he was preparing for his seventh death-penalty case, however, he agreed to the interview only on condition that the upcoming case not be mentioned.

“It’s no secret I am a strong believer in the death penalty,” he said.

Of the six men he has sentenced to Death Row, he noted: “They are all deserving fellows.”

To Fitzgerald, death-penalty cases are among the most critical in the country’s judicial system. The crimes are often the most vicious, the sentencing decision the most difficult a judge can make, he said.

And for the family of the victims, the wait until final resolution is always the longest.

However, if the day ever arrives when someone he has sentenced to death is finally executed, Fitzgerald will not be uncorking champagne.

“I suppose it will be sad in a way, because it’s sad any time a human being dies,” the judge said. “But it was also sad to sit in the courtroom and listen to the ghastly details of what they did to their victims.”

Three of Fitzgerald’s six--Thompson, 36, Jaratun Siripongs, 39, and James Melton, 39--have had their convictions and death sentences upheld by both the California Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court. They are now beginning their second round of federal appeals. The other three--John Visciotti, 34, William Noguera, 26, and Rodney Beeler, 39--are still in the state court system, though Visciotti has also been turned down by the state Supreme Court.

Fitzgerald has never heard from any of the six--”we aren’t pen pals,” he noted--nor has he heard from any of their families.

But he does keep track of their appellate progress. And the judge can tell you in chilling detail about the crimes they committed.

“In some cases, the viciousness of the killing alone was enough to offset any mitigating factors they might have had in their favor,” he said.

Fitzgerald insisted that he does not simply rubber-stamp a jury’s death verdict. A judge must independently weigh all of the factors and make the final decision, he said.

Although it is not impossible that he would overrule a jury’s death verdict, that has never happened in Orange County since California restored capital punishment 13 years ago.

Fitzgerald, however, is known for his fierce independence on the bench. Though he is generally more liked by prosecutors than defense attorneys, he made national headlines twice in recent years by giving a defendant a break.

In 1986, Fitzgerald granted probation to one young man convicted of voluntary manslaughter, after all 12 jurors returned to court at a dramatic sentencing hearing and pleaded on behalf of the defendant for leniency.

Fitzgerald also overruled a jury in 1989 and declared a Fullerton woman, who had been convicted of murdering her baby, temporarily insane. The 4th District Court of Appeal later criticized him for exceeding his authority but agreed that punishing the woman further was a moot point.

Fitzgerald’s judicial career was controversial long before he sentenced anyone to the gas chamber.

A Marine Corps veteran who served in Korea--a picture of John Wayne has long hung in his courtroom chambers--Fitzgerald began his career as a prosecutor in Orange and Los Angeles counties. He was elected to the North Municipal Court bench in 1976.

Most municipal judges go through their careers without making very many headlines. But Fitzgerald found himself the target of criticism and editorials when he gave a stiff sentence to two peace protesters who had blocked the doorway at the Anaheim Convention Center during a military arms exposition.

The judge said he sentenced them to jail only because they were already on probation for a similar offense. Fitzgerald told the defendants that he would let them go after 30 days if they wrote a letter promising they would not do it again. When they refused, he finally turned them loose after two months in jail.

“I have to admit that you are even more stubborn than I am,” he said at the time.

More controversy was created when Fitzgerald ran for a Superior Court seat in 1980. His campaign signs read, “Re-Elect Judge Fitzgerald.” He was a judge who had been elected before--but not to Superior Court. Fitzgerald took the signs down, but won the election anyway.

Fitzgerald, who is married and has two grown daughters, admits that he is more outspoken than most judges. But he has said repeatedly, “The public has a right to know where we stand.”

Fitzgerald will probably have some contact with the six men he has sent to Death Row. Once each phase of an appeal is completed, the defendant is returned to appear before the sentencing judge, who schedules an execution.

Fitzgerald has already set execution dates for three of his condemned men whose first round of appeals were denied by the U.S. Supreme Court. But all those dates were stayed when their attorneys filed new rounds of federal court appeals.

“It’s ridiculous that we can’t decide these appeals in four or five years,” Fitzgerald said. “I think it’s an added level of suffering for the person waiting to be executed.”

Fitzgerald, however, does not share the view that capital punishment is a deterrent to crime.

“When somebody is about to commit a murder,” the judge said, “there is an emotional moment right before the crime that they go through, and they give absolutely no thought to the consequences of what they are about to do. But the good thing is, it will be a deterrent to the person executed.”

Fitzgerald said he does not know what his reaction will be the day one of his six is executed.

“It will be so needless, because it was so needless for any of those men to have taken someone else’s life,” he said. “I don’t think any of us can say how we’d feel--or whether we would be willing to actually witness an execution--until that day comes.

“But I can tell you, I think that day should have come and gone by now for some of them.”

Orange County’s Death Row Inmates

Twenty-one men who have been sentenced in Orange County Superior Court are on San Quentin’s Death Row to await execution. State prosecutors, however, say that just three or four of them are within five years of exhausting their appeals.

* Rodney James Alcala, 47, convicted in the June 20, 1979, murder of Robin Samsoe, 12, of Huntington Beach. Sentenced June 20, 1986, in a death penalty retrial.

* Rodney Gene Beeler, 39, convicted in the Dec. 30, 1985, fatal shooting of Anthony J. Stevenson, 23, as he burglarized the man’s Orange house. Sentenced May 5, 1989.

* William George Bonin, 43, the Freeway Killer, convicted of murdering 14 boys. Sentenced in Los Angeles County on Jan. 2, 1982, for 10 murders, and in Orange County on Aug. 26, 1983, for four murders.

* John George Brown, also known as Gordon Lee Mink, 43, convicted in the June 9, 1980, murder of Garden Grove Police Officer Donald Reed. Sentenced June 11, 1982.

* Kenneth Clair, 30, convicted in the Nov. 15, 1984, stabbing and strangulation murder of Linda Faye Rodgers, 25, during a robbery at her Santa Ana home. Sentenced Dec. 4, 1987.

* John Galen Davenport, 36, convicted in the March 27, 1980, stabbing death of Gayle Ann Lingle, 30, of Tustin. Sentenced to death in 1981, sentenced again after a new penalty trial on June 26, 1990.

* Fred Berre Douglas, 63, convicted in the Aug. 13, 1982, murder of Beth Jones, 19, and Margaret Krueger, 16, whom he picked up in Orange County, during a nude photo session in rural San Diego County. Sentenced April 5, 1985.

* Thomas Francis Edwards, convicted in the Sept. 19, 1979, murder of Vanessa Ibelli, 12, of Lake Elsinore. Sentenced Dec. 11, 1986.

* Theodore Frank, 55, convicted in the March 14, 1978, murder of 2-year-old Amy Sue Seitz in Ventura County. Sentenced in Orange County on a change of venue in a second death-penalty trial on Feb. 11, 1987.

* Martin James Kipp, 31, convicted in the Dec. 30, 1983, rape-murder of Antaya Yvette Howard, 19, of Huntington Beach. Sentenced on Sept. 18, 1987.

* Randy Steven Kraft, 46, convicted of 16 murders of young men over 10 years. Sentenced Nov. 29, 1989.

* Teofillo Medina Jr., 48, convicted of four murders during a robbery spree in the county in 1984. Sentenced Feb. 25, 1987.

* James Andrew Melton, 39, convicted in the Oct. 10, 1981, strangulation murder of Tony DeSousa, 77, during a robbery at the victim’s Newport Beach home. Sentenced March 18, 1983.

* William Adolph Noguera, 26, convicted of murdering Jovita V. Navarro, 42, his girlfriend’s mother, at her Fullerton home on April 24, 1983. Sentenced Jan. 29, 1988.

* William Charles Payton, 37, convicted in the May 26, 1980, rape-murder of Pamela Montgomery, 21, in Garden Grove. Sentenced March 5, 1982.

* Richard Raymond Ramirez, 31, convicted in the Nov. 21, 1983, rape-murder in Santa Ana of Kimberly Gonsalez, 22. Sentenced July 26, 1985. (He is not the convicted murderer Richard Ramirez who was labeled the Night Stalker.)

* Marcelino Ramos, 33, convicted in the June 3, 1979, murder of Katherine Parrott, 20, during a robbery at the Santa Ana Taco Bell. Sentenced April 14, 1988 on a death-penalty retrial.

* Jaturun Siripongs, 39, convicted in the Dec. 15, 1981, murder of Packawan Wattanaport, 36, and Nguyen Quach, 52, during a robbery at a Garden Grove market. Sentenced April 21, 1983.

* Robert Jackson Thompson, 43, convicted in the Aug. 25, 1981, murder of newsboy Benjamin Brenneman, 12. Sentenced Oct. 21, 1983.

* Thomas Martin Thompson, 36, convicted in the Sept. 12, 1981, murder of Ginger Fleischli, 20, of Mission Viejo. Sentenced Aug. 17, 1984.

* John Louis Visciotti, 34, convicted in the Nov. 8, 1982, murder of Timothy Dykstra, 22, of Garden Grove, during a robbery. Sentenced Oct. 21, 1983.