Film Revives Legal Questions From 1995 Killing by Teens

More than five years ago, a backyard brawl among teenagers in Agoura Hills ended in the stabbing death of Jimmy Farris, the 16-year-old son of a Los Angeles police officer.

A new documentary by an Oscar-nominated director is reviving questions about the court case that followed.

Three teenagers were convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, and a younger boy, also convicted of first-degree murder, was given 25 years to life. Only one youth admitted to the stabbing.

In director William Gazecki’s documentary, “Reckless Indifference,” which opens today at Laemmle’s Grande 4-Plex downtown, Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz joins parents, defense attorneys and others in blasting the justice system for sentences that Dershowitz calls “disproportional, outrageous, unconstitutional and immoral.”

“This is clearly not a case where the law was properly applied,” Dershowitz says in the movie. “This is a manslaughter case.”

Judie Farris, the mother of the slain youth, said she is still too hurt by the crime to analyze the court sentences. The documentary, she said, has done little more than revive her pain. “It totally disrupts my life,” she said. “It brings back everything.”

Although only one youth apparently wielded the knife, all four were charged with first-degree murder under the law that extends liability to everyone involved in a crime that results in a killing.

State Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Los Angeles), who in the film interviews one of the convicted youths, Brandon Hein, introduced a bill last year to require courts to tailor such sentences to a defendant’s role in the crime. The bill was voted down on the Senate floor.

Now parents of the defendants, all four of whom are appealing their sentences, are hoping the film will bring more attention to their sons’ plight.

“It was nerve-racking, but emotionally satisfying,” Brandon Hein’s father, Gene Hein, said of the film. “I think the movie shows the injustice of the whole situation.”

Gazecki, who was nominated for an Academy Award for the 1996 documentary “Waco: The Rules of Engagement,” called his new film “compassionate without being knee-jerk liberal.”

“These kids were stupid and they were reckless,” he said. “But they were kids, and the system was equally as reckless.”

On May 22, 1995, the five Conejo Valley youths, ages 15 to 18, drove to an Agoura Hills home where teenager Mike McLoren was known to sell marijuana from a backyard fort. Four boys--Anthony Miliotti, Brandon Hein, and brothers Jason and Micah Holland--got out of the car with the intention of either stealing or buying McLoren’s pot.

The youths entered the fort, and a fistfight broke out, with Hein and the Holland brothers against McLoren and his friend, Jimmy Farris. Anthony Miliotti was standing in the doorway.

Jason Holland admitted stabbing Farris and McLoren. McLoren recovered, but Farris died of his wounds.

Three defendants--Hein, Jason Holland and Miliotti--were sentenced to life terms in August 1996. The jury found that they acted with reckless indifference, a special circumstance that ruled out the possibility of parole.

The fourth, Micah Holland, received a sentence of 25 years to life, the maximum he could receive as a 15-year-old. The fifth youth, Chris Velardo--who stayed in the car during the fight--pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and was given 11 years in prison.

Before the sentencing, Malibu Municipal Judge Lawrence J. Mira said that, on the afternoon of the incident, the youths had gone on a deliberate crime rampage that included stealing a wallet from a woman’s van and later verbally assaulting her.

But Dershowitz and others in the film take issue with some of the prosecutors’ key tactics--such as putting the youths on trial as adults. They also criticized the prosecution’s argument that the youths acted as part of a gang and that they arrived with the intent to rob McLoren.

Critics in the film--which is in a limited seven-day run--say the victim’s father, Jim Farris, a Los Angeles police officer, had undue influence on the case.

In the wake of the O.J. Simpson trial and other perceived failures by the district attorney’s office, they say, prosecutors were under pressure to get convictions.

In the movie and in person, prosecutors deny that they were influenced by politics, or that Jim Farris was shown any special deference.