By Reid Collins on 7.24.02 @ 12:02AM
The accused killer of Samantha Runnion can only take comfort in the Orange County D.A.'s hesitance to seek the death penalty.
Legal dawdling was on the list of oppressions that Hamlet
complained of in his soliloquy. Lucky it was Denmark and not
Southern California, lest the melancholy Dane might have overcome
his reservations about an afterlife and off'ed himself well before
the final curtain.
Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas is keeping a
nation on tenterhooks about his decision in the Alejandro Avila
murder case, Avila the man accused of kidnapping, violating and
murdering 5-year-old Samantha Runnion. It'll be about two weeks,
Rackauckas says, before he decides whether he will seek the death
penalty in the case. Incredulous television interviewers often ask
the D. A. if he has had capital cases before, supposing they may
have a death penalty opponent on their hands. No, not the case.
Rackauckas says he has prosecuted several capital cases and
successfully. Of course, none has been executed yet, but await
their destiny on California death row.
If that's not it, what is it? What occasions the delay in
deciding to seek what even Avila's mother has said is the just
desert for a man who would do a thing such as that done to
Samantha? Well, there is this committee, explains the D. A., and he
would like to meet with it and to interview Samantha's family
and... Wait. This is not a medieval time in which families are
consulted about penalties. The crime is against the state, the
people, their sense of acceptable conduct. Bothering Samantha's
family is not or at least should not be a part of the process. What
if they had some particular compunction about the ultimate penalty?
What if ...? The imponderables are legion.
True, in assessing penalties after guilt has been established,
there has arisen an atavistic procedure in which relatives of the
deceased are allowed to vent and pals of the defendant are allowed
to offer affirmative testimony. All of it a bad idea, considering
that the criminal offense is against the state, the public order,
and not the survivors of victims. The lone murder victim with no
mourners to weep before the bar is no less regarded in law.
Rackauckas's reluctance is dangerously reminiscent of another
southern California case: the knife-murders of Mrs. O. J. Simpson
and Ronald Goldman, the fellow on her doorstep. The then-D. A. Gil
Garcetti made an early move that pre-ordained disaster for the
prosecution. He actually met privately with local "civil rights
leaders" and gave them his promise that he would not seek the death
penalty for O.J. Simpson. It was downhill from there. Garcetti and
company flailed away in that sand trap for nine months and lost the
case. The long hesitation of Rackauckas in deciding what penalty to
seek for an alleged child molester-killer can only lead to doubt as
to the validity of evidence, doubt that can be revivified in a
juror's mind come trial time.
So we have the odd couple, seen together time and again. The
Orange County Sheriff proclaiming the evidence is irrefutable,
making him 100 percent sure he has the right man in Avila. D. A.
Rackauckas not disputing this, but insisting on a committee meeting
to determine what course to take.
Mother Avila recalls watching the story on television with her
yet to be arrested son and remarking that whoever did that should
be "burned." She, with Hamlet, understood that part about "the
oppressor's wrong... the law's delay."
topics:
Television, Law
