Criminal
Aug. 14, 2002
Woman Faces Death Penalty
LOS ANGELES - The California Supreme Court on Monday upheld the death sentence of a former Los Angeles nurse who could become the first woman executed in the modern era of the state's death row.
Maureen McDermott is the first of 12 women on death row to have her death penalty affirmed by the state's highest court.
Now 55, McDermott was convicted in 1989 of agreeing to pay Jimmy Luna, a co-worker at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center, $50,000 to stab her roommate to death. McDermott wanted Stephen Eldridge's interest in a Van Nuys home they shared, as well as a payout from Eldridge's $100,000 life insurance policy, prosecutors alleged.
The high court rejected a claim by McDermott's lawyers that she did not get a trial by a jury of her peers. The lawyers had accused the prosecutor, former Deputy District Attorney Katherine Mader, of intentionally dismissing blacks from the panel because McDermott is black. Mader, now a Los Angeles Superior Court judge, claimed she booted eight blacks from the panel because they had unfavorable things to say about the death penalty.
"A prospective juror's views about the death penalty are a permissible race- and group-neutral basis for exercising a peremptory challenge in a capital case," Justice Joyce L. Kennard wrote for the unanimous court. People v. McDermott S016081 (Cal. Aug. 12, 2002).
Mader also called one black panel member who expressed misgivings about the death penalty "very, very stupid." The jury had no black members until a panelist, booted for reading newspaper coverage of the case, was replaced by an African-American alternate.
During the trial, Mader compared McDermott to a "snake," a "rabid dog," a "human monster" and a "mutation."
The Supreme Court said it did not "condone the use of opprobrious terms in argument, but such epithets are not necessarily misconduct when they are reasonably warranted by the evidence."
The court also rejected claims by McDermott's appellate lawyers that her trial lawyer, Joe Ingber, had a conflict of interest because he also represented Luna's cellmate. Luna, who testified against McDermott, admitted that he regularly had sex with his cellmate.
Nevertheless, the court found that McDermott was adequately informed of the relationship and waived her right to get another lawyer.
McDermott's execution date is years off. She has yet to file a petition to have the case reviewed by the federal courts, although her lawyer, Steffan Imhoff of Del Mar, vowed to do so soon.
"California's Supreme Court today affirmed the conviction of an innocent woman who received an unfair trial," Imhoff said in a prepared statement. "The only evidence against her came from the testimony of a psychotic, homicidal maniac with multiple personalities. Maureen McDermott will continue to seek justice in the federal courts."
Luna, and two accomplices, brothers Marvin and Dondell Lee, testified against McDermott in deals with the district attorney.
Hallye Jordan, spokeswoman for the state attorney general, said prosecutors were "pleased" with the Supreme Court's decision to uphold "a pretty straightforward case."
If McDermott is executed, she would be the first woman to so die in the state since capital punishment was reinstated in 1977.
Eldridge was stabbed 44 times on April 28, 1985. He had been feuding with McDermott because he didn't like her pets and thought she kept the house dirty. McDermott believed Eldridge mistreated her pets and was upset that he planned to sell his interest in the house to somebody else.
Luna enlisted the Lees to help him after he couldn't follow through with three previous plots to kill Eldridge, prosecutors said. A month before the killing, Luna and Marvin Lee broke into the house and hit Eldridge over the head with a bedpost but he managed to escape before they killed him.
McDermott ordered Luna to cut off Eldridge's penis and carve the word "gay" into his body because she believed the police would not vigorously investigate the murder of a homosexual. She also instructed Luna to cut superficial wounds into one of her thighs and breasts to make the crime look like a home-invasion robbery.
David Houston
david_houston@dailyjournal.com
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