Show Court won wont won't t review killers killer s overturned conviction David G. G Savage Los Angeles Times Twenty-five Twenty years ago this month Jackson Daniels shot and killed two Riverside Calif police officers who had come to arrest him Daniels a career criminal had been shot and left paralyzed as he tried to flee the scene of a bank robbery two years before While his court case was pending he had been recovering at a friends friend's house and kept a gun near the bed apparently waiting for the police to come for him When officers Dennis Doty and Phil Trust arrived a to take him into custody Daniels pulled out his gun and shot them Ordering his caretaker to drive him away Daniels told her he had to pay them back because of what they had done to him He was tried and convicted of murdering the two officers and in 1983 a jury sentenced him to die Now prosecutors are left with the option of starting over again because Danielss Daniels's conviction had been overturned by the US U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in November and the Supreme Court said Tuesday it would not review the case In a one-line one order in inc c 1 Ayers vs Daniels the justices turned away an appeal filed by the office of California Attorney General Jerry Brown That left standing a 3 0 ruling by the Circuit that said Daniels was denied a fair trial because of ofa a complete breakdown in communication between the defendant and his pair of rookie lawyers Judge Harry pointed to problems with the defense lawyers and said Daniels suffered a constructive denial of counsel because he was unable and unwilling to toRe Rc Re lew Jew Continued on page 3 d t f. Review denied Continued d from page 1 work with his lawyers It is understandable that Daniels Daniels' would mistrust the judicial process and his counsel When viewed in the context of Daniels Daniels' paranoid delusions including his belief that his defense counsel was conspiring with the prosecution to kill him it is easy to seewhy see seewhy seewhy why this mistrust led to a complete breakdown of communication wrote Judges Betty Fletcher and Warren Ferguson joined his opinion overturning the conviction and the death sentence given Daniels In their appeal state prosecutors called this an absurd result Prosecutors in Riverside County are gearing up to retry this said Steve Oetting Getting a deputy attorney general in San Diego But you can imagine the difficulty of conducting a anew anew anew new trial after a quarter- quarter century |