Criminal
Jun. 20, 2002
Ex-Mortician Faces Probation Violation Charges
LOS ANGELES - David Sconce, former co-proprietor of the notorious Pasadena Lamb Funeral Home and recipient of an unusual life probation plea deal, was back in Pasadena Superior Court on Tuesday to face charges that he violated his probation.
Judge Joseph F. De Vanon ordered Sconce restored to his life probation and imposed stricter requirements, including a monthly face-to-face probation visit in the Pasadena courthouse.
Sconce has been in and out of courtrooms since 1987, when the scandal surfaced surrounding the Lamb Funeral Home. He also was charged with murder in the death of a rival funeral home operator, but those charges were dropped in 1991.
Under terms of his probation, Sconce is to stay away from the mortuary sciences business. If he violates the agreement, he could be sentenced to 25 years to life.
On Tuesday, Deputy District Attorney Thomas Krag said he could produce two witnesses, both workers at a funeral home, to testify that Sconce had approached them about "getting involved in the crematorium business ... in the state of Arizona."
Neither witness had any inclination to start a mortuary business with Sconce, Krag said.
Sconce's attorney, Santa Monica sole practitioner Roger Diamond, denied that his client had made overtures toward working again in the field of mortuary science.
Sconce admitted to De Vanon, however, that he had violated his probation and had ignored an arrest warrant for him in California. Sconce, who had been living in Arizona and seeking to have his probation transferred there, had been using a post office box in Needles to make his parole officer think he was living in California.
"I don't know the whole tortured history of this case ... [but] if you come back before me on a violation of probation, I will sentence you to life in prison," De Vanon said.
Sconce's life probation deal originated in 1989, when he pleaded guilty to 21 counts involving the Lamb Funeral Home, including charges that he co-mingled ashes of customers and sold off their body parts, such as lungs and corneas, before he cremated the bodies.
Sconce also pleaded guilty to charges of solicitation of the murder of his grandparents and of Deputy District Attorney Walt Lewis, none of whom were ever harmed. Judge Terry Smerling gave Sconce five years in prison on the funeral home counts and dismissed a second charge, conspiracy to murder a second rival mortician, Elie Estephan, which was filed as a separate case. People v. Sconce, A573819 (L.A. Super. Ct., filed June 5, 1987, amended June 8, 1987).
Smerling offered Sconce the opportunity to plead guilty and receive life probation and no time in custody if a higher court later reversed dismissal of the conspiracy - which later happened. People v. Sconce, 228 Cal.App.3d 693 (2nd Dist. March 18, 1991).
The district attorney's office, in a series of convoluted motions and appeals that stretched until 1996, tried to have Smerling's offer to Sconce vacated. But in 1996, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued an unpublished decision in favor of Sconce, ruling that Sconce's plea deal should be allowed to stand - especially since he had served a part of the sentence that came with the deal. Sconce v. Garcetti, 96-552098 (9th Cir. 1996).
Diamond did not represent Sconce at the time of the 1989 plea agreement. However, he said the unusual plea deal was based on the assumption that Sconce would be convicted of murder in the unexpected death of 25-year-old Timothy Waters, a rival funeral home operator, who died in 1985 of an apparent heart attack in Ventura. But, after Sconce accepted the plea deal, Ventura prosecutors dropped the charges against him.
Smerling could not be reached for comment by press time.
"You look for justice, you search for it, and sometimes you get it, and sometimes you don't. In this case, it wasn't justice," Thomas Krag, the deputy district attorney currently handling the case, said.
The prosecutors in charge of Sconce's case in 1989 were James Rogan, current undersecretary of Commerce for intellectual property, and Harvey Giss, now a Los Angeles Superior Court judge.
At the time of Sconce's deal in Pasadena, Ventura County prosecutors were investigating whether Sconce had poisoned Waters with an oleander plant. Books about oleander had been found in Sconce's apartment, Diamond said.
Waters died in Ventura on Easter Sunday while visiting his parents, which put the potential murder case in Ventura County court.
Diamond had Waters' body exhumed and tested for oleander - a leafy flowering plant that is poisonous in small doses. The tests came up negative, and Ventura prosecutors dropped the charges against Sconce in 1991 for lack of evidence.
By then, Sconce had worn away his five-year sentence for a host of charges including mortuary misconduct and solicitation to murder his grandparents and a prosecutor. With time off for good behavior, he was due to be released in 1990. However, he remained in jail until the Ventura charges were dismissed.
"The DA is still mad that he escaped the situation in Ventura with the death penalty case," Diamond said after the hearing.
Krag said that Sconce's failure to cooperate with the probation department had nothing to do with the district attorney's office.
"[Sconce has] made his bed, and [that] Mr. Diamond or whoever wants to think that we're somehow after his client because we're still upset and angry with how things turned out before is completely preposterous," the prosecutor said.
During the hearing, Krag described the history of the Sconce case as "long and tortured."
"The defendant has already earned his life sentence ... but for the fact that the federal courts ruled as they did," he said.
Sconce's parents, Laurieanne and Jerry Sconce, also were charged with mishandling of remains in connection with the Lamb Funeral Home and served a few years in prison. They were in the courtroom Tuesday.
Katherine Gaidos
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