Norco '80

by Peter Houlahan

  IF ANYONE HAD THOUGHT THE TRIAL OF THE NORCO 3 WAS GOING TO PROCEED smoothly or rapidly, they were quickly disabused of that notion on the opening day, June 15, 1981.

  Instigated by Chris and George in hopes of forcing a severance, Russell Harven announced he no longer wanted Alan Olson as his attorney. “Mr. Olson hasn’t had any murder trials,” Russ stammered uncertainly, “and some of the motions I have wanted filed, he never did.” It was far from the confident and aggressive performance his older brother had displayed when firing his own attorney, Jay Grossman, six months earlier.

  Hennigan was having none of it. “I don’t know if any of the other attorneys have had this experience, either,” he responded, referring to a capital murder trial. “None of the judges in Riverside County have heard such a case.” Sensing Russell’s heart was not in the request to begin with, Hennigan softened to an almost fatherly tone. “Mr. Olson has been with you from the beginning. He has been very competent. I’ll deny the motion for now.”

  Outside the courthouse, Alan Olson told reporters the whole thing was nothing more than “pre-trial jitters” on the part of his client.

  Things got more complicated when Hennigan granted a defense motion for a closed jury selection process, excluding both the media and public. While the Riverside and San Diego papers appealed the judge’s decision, the Press-Enterprise ordered reporter Bob LaBarre to continue to seat himself in the courtroom gallery at the beginning of every session throughout the day. For weeks, LaBarre dutifully entered the courtroom and took his seat, only to be formally, but good-naturedly, expelled from the courtroom. LaBarre would then rise and shuffle out to the hallway like a dejected sad sack until the ritual was to be repeated all over again the next time. The charade was mercifully terminated when the California Supreme Court upheld Hennigan’s right to conduct jury selection behind closed doors.

  The defense’s second major motion was to object to the long-established practice in capital murder cases of automatically excluding prospective jurors who express extreme views regarding the death penalty. Hennigan granted the request along with what he thought was a compromise: “Anti-death” and “auto-death” jurors could sit for the guilt phase of the trial and be replaced with open-opinion alternates for the penalty phase. Jay Hanks was irate, voicing his displeasure in the court and to the press. Alan Olson took a swipe at Hanks, telling a reporter, “It will mean we will have a fairer jury. That’s why Hanks is so upset. A fair jury is detrimental to the prosecutor’s case.”

  The defense teams were not nearly through with their attempts to shove a stick in the spokes of justice, filing another barrage of motions to delay the start of the trial. “Jury selection in the trial of three men accused of killing a Riverside deputy sheriff would have begun today but for three obstacles: the defense lawyers,” wrote reporter Pauline Repard in the Vista Press. “Collectively, the three challenged practically every aspect of the justice system.”

  Michael Lloyd objected to San Diego’s method of drawing names for jury duty using only voter registration rolls and filed a motion for a change of venue to San Bernardino County. Hennigan resolved that issue with a simple question to the defendants themselves: “Do you really want to be tried by San Bernardino County jurors?” After a ten-minute recess, Hennigan had his answer: Fuck no, they didn’t want to get tried in Cow County. Alan Olson found an administrative error on the part of the prosecution that automatically triggered another one-week delay to July 7. Clayton Adams demanded the trial be moved to a larger courtroom to accommodate three defendants along with their legal teams, saying the small courtroom “will effectively destroy the defense.” Adams’s attempt to rearrange the furniture himself resulted in a screaming match with Lloyd before a veteran bailiff stepped in to stop Adams. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” the man barked. Another wrench was thrown into the trial process when eight hundred San Diego County sheriff’s deputies went on strike over wages requiring all 289 Vista inmates to be bused to jails in neighboring counties. In a discussion between the Norco 3’s attorneys and Hennigan over how the defendants should be transported a total of 140 miles back and forth from Riverside to the Vista courthouse each day, the judge cracked, “Maybe we should let them find their own transportation; they seemed successful at getting a pickup truck.”

  On July 7, 1981, the voir dire process officially got under way with Hennigan announcing a confounding series of never-before-seen jury selection procedures in which jurors would be prescreened individually rather than in groups. Befuddled attorneys on both sides spent more than an hour trying to clarify the new procedure, which would add two ponderous steps and countless hours to the process. With Hennigan making changes and adjustments on the fly to satisfy numerous objections, the whole thing became so convoluted that a flummoxed Clayton Adams finally threw up his hands in frustration. “I’m lost. I just don’t get it.” When Jay Hanks pointed out they would have to read the entire forty-two-page complaint against the defendants to each juror individually, Hennigan was annoyed. “If you insist that be done, get your tonsils oiled. Because if you insist, you’ll do it.”

  Once the process got started, things moved so slowly that before the first day was over, Hanks was imploring the judge to scrap the new plan and go back to screening jurors in groups. Hennigan stuck to his guns. Instead of the intended twenty minutes, questioning of the first prospective juror took seven and a half hours over three days, ending with marine corporal David Wright dismissed from jury duty. Seventeen other scheduled juror appointments had to be canceled in the meantime. “Did you ever feel like you were swimming in a pool of molasses in thirty-degree temperature?” Hennigan confessed to reporter Bob LaBarre. “That’s how it’s been.”

  When Hennigan tried to speed things up by imposing a time limit to voir dire, the increasingly petulant Michael Lloyd ceased questioning prospective jurors altogether. “The whole jury-picking process is a farce,” he told a local paper. “I will not take the responsibility for this,” a disgusted Clayton Adams growled to a reporter. “I told the judge three months ago that it was [an] error.”

  The drawn-out jury selection process was especially hard on the physical and mental health of the defense teams. They were living out of hotel rooms away from their families and carrying enormous workloads, all in the name of a cause that was thankless, unpopular, and borderline hopeless. Michael Lloyd became so ill at one point the trial was delayed for a week. On Tuesday, July 21, Alan Olson approached the bench to inform Hennigan that he was having heart palpitations and numbness of the lips. Hennigan called a recess, and Olson was taken to a nearby VA hospital where doctors informed him he was having a heart attack. “The trial is taking its toll on him,” his brother and investigator, Roger Olson, told reporters. Olson remained hospitalized until cleared to return to the courtroom the following week, where jury selection resumed after a nine-day delay.

  NO ONE WAS FRAYING FROM THE STRESS AS MUCH AS CLAYTON ADAMS. HE had become increasingly exasperated with the runaway selection process and what he perceived to be the prosecution’s intentionally slow response to discovery orders to produce evidence and documents. Already significantly overweight, Adams was sleeping in a motel bed and hauling around heavy boxes of law books, which soon caused an existing upper back condition to flare up. The pain became chronic, radiating up his neck and into his arms and causing debilitating muscle spasms that made the long days standing and sitting in court almost unbearable.

  It all boiled over in the courtroom on November 19, 1981. When Adams ran long on questioning a prospective juror, Hennigan stepped in to limit him to one final question. While the woman was answering, Adams cut her off to clarify a sentence. The judge was annoyed. “Let her finish her answer,” he said.

  “Well, Your Honor, you interrupt me more than I interrupt you,” Adams fired back in a display of open disrespect not normally tolerated by judges.

  With the day’s session already running over, Hennigan put an end to it. “I am going to
call a halt, Mr. Adams, to questioning, and I’m going to declare that Mrs. Morris is not disqualified as an automatic-death-penalty person.”

  Adams was livid. “Your Honor, I object for the record to the Court’s constant interrupting and changing Counsel’s questions and leading the jurors,” he said. “And, in fact, I insist that this procedure be changed, or I intend to take some drastic steps, Your Honor.”

  “You may take what steps you wish,” Hennigan cut him off. “I have ruled.” He rose from his seat. “We’re in recess until tomorrow morning at nine o’clock.”

  Adams didn’t move. “I will request a brief interview with the Court in chambers.”

  “Tomorrow at nine o’clock you may have so,” Hennigan said firmly.

  “I will not be here tomorrow morning at nine o’clock, unless I have that interview tonight.”

  Hennigan paused, blindsided by Adams’s blatant defiance. “If you wish to see me, you will see me tomorrow morning at nine o’clock,” he said.

  “I will advise the Court that I will not be here.”

  “If you are not, Mr. Adams, you will be in contempt of court.”

  “Thank you very much, Your Honor,” Adams said. With that, he turned his back on the judge, packed up his briefcase, and left.

  When court reconvened the following morning, Hennigan took his seat on the bench and scanned the participants arrayed before him. “The record may show it is now 9:40. Counsel are present, except Mr. Adams is not present. Mr. Bailiff, have you seen Mr. Adams in the hall or anyplace else?”

  “No, Your Honor, I haven’t.”

  “Ms. Painter,” Hennigan asked investigator Jeanne Painter, sitting alone at the defense table with George Smith, “do you know the present location of Mr. Adams?”

  “No, I don’t,” she said.

  “Was he in the city?”

  “No.” Painter shook her head.

  “It appears to the Court in the absence of some good cause that a direct contempt of this court has probably occurred.” Hennigan turned to Michael Lloyd. “Mr. Lloyd, you have spoken on the phone to Mr. Adams this morning?”

  Lloyd stood. “Yes, I have, Your Honor. Just moments ago.”

  “Can you relay any message to the Court as to why Mr. Adams is not present, or an excuse for not being present?”

  “I don’t know of an excuse in the legal sense,” Lloyd began. “I know of the reason for his not being here.” Hennigan asked to hear it. “Basically, Mr. Adams felt that there were major differences between the court and himself as to the voir dire process.” Lloyd went on to explain that Adams’s “condition” for returning was a meeting with the judge in the absence of the other attorneys. Lloyd quoted Adams directly: “Well, if I can’t come in and talk to the court on the record and ex parte in chambers, then I am not going to come in.”

  Jay Hanks could take the display of gross insolence no longer. “I would state so the court might know precisely,” he sputtered, “I find that this laying down of conditions to return to this court is reprehensible. It is beyond comprehension, frankly, from my perspective. I believe that it is contemptuous in the extreme, and that such conduct should not be tolerated by the court.”

  Hennigan told Lloyd to inform Adams that he had two hours to get his ass into the courtroom or a warrant would be issued for his arrest.

  Lloyd did indeed pass the information on in a call to Adams immediately upon recess, after which the AWOL attorney was back in the courtroom and standing before the judge at 1:35 p.m. that afternoon.

  “Mr. Adams, it appeared to the court this morning that you were in contempt of this court by failing to appear at a time that was set.”

  “I simply wanted to request the court to reconsider and permit voir dire uninterrupted,” Adams argued defiantly. “And I am prepared to say at this time that if the court is not inclined in its discretion and generosity to reconsider and grant what I view as a very simple request . . . then I am still at this time prepared to risk contempt in order to reserve those rights for my client.”

  “If the request is that the court not participate in voir dire,” Hennigan cut him off sharply, “the request is denied.” Hennigan then ordered Adams to appear for a contempt hearing before a different judge.

  “I am prepared to face the consequences,” Adams announced melodramatically.

  When Adams appeared for his trial on the contempt charge one week later, it was before the Honorable Charles W. Froehlich Jr., a judge with little tolerance for frivolous arguments in his courtroom.

  “I believe at this time it would be appropriate to, in addition to a denial of the contempt, enter a plea of basically temporary insanity,” Adams’s attorney Adrian Roth said, “and request for an appointment [with] doctors to examine Mr. Adams as to whether at the time of the alleged contempt Mr. Adams had a sufficient mental disability.”

  “Counsel, that’s a spurious motion,” Froehlich scoffed. “Motion denied.”

  Unable to secure a delay, Roth declined to mount any defense at all. Froehlich moved straight into his verdict. “It’s clear to the court that he had the ability to appear, had no excuse or reason for failing to appear,” he said of Adams. “There is no excuse for that kind of conduct unbecoming an officer of the court. Mr. Adams must be found in contempt of court and he must be punished.”

  In pronouncing the sentence, Froehlich did not mince words about how he felt about Mr. Adams and his behavior. “I should say that it’s difficult to conceive of any action by an attorney that is more contemptuous of the court’s processes than this one. The court will sentence him to five days in jail and a fine of $500.”

  The judge agreed to Roth’s request that any jail time should be postponed until the completion of the Norco trial. With that, Froehlich gaveled the case closed. It had taken all of twenty minutes for the judge to try the case and sentence the defendant when Adams and Roth had expected to draw it out for months. When Michael Lloyd heard about Froehlich’s squashing of Adams’s attempts to mount a defense, he was livid and dashed off a letter to the Press-Enterprise for publication in the December 10 Reader’s Open Forum section.

  Slathered in melodrama, hyperbole, and self-righteousness, Lloyd railed against “a closed mind by a particular judge” who had deprived Adams of his constitutional right to defend himself. “I cannot think of any action by the government more contemptuous than denying due process of the law; denying the constitutional right to defend oneself when accused.” Lloyd went on to refer to the judge as a “governmental employee who abuses the legal system.” Within days of the letter’s publication, Froehlich slapped Lloyd with a contempt charge of his own and fined him $500.

  Prosecutor Jay Hanks had been so irked by Lloyd’s editorial that he jumped into the fray himself. His own letter to the editor titled “Not Used to the Pace” appeared in the Press-Enterprise nine days after Lloyd’s. Dripping in sarcasm, Hanks ridiculed Lloyd. “His tirade about the San Diego Judiciary was unfounded, unfortunate, unnecessary, and worst of all, silly.” Hanks contrasted Froehlich’s “deliberate speed” with the “sedentary” pace of Hennigan’s Norco trial. “Undoubtedly Mr. Lloyd would have preferred that the San Diego Court adopt a pace similar to that reflected in the Norco bank robbery trial. The fact that the San Diego Court would not do that speaks volumes about many things.” Anyone intimate with the Norco trial to date knew that by “many things,” Hanks actually meant “one thing”: J. David Hennigan.

  As the voir dire processes mercifully limped over the finish line, everyone involved was showing signs of battle fatigue. All three defense attorneys had broken down physically at some point—Adams’s spinal pain had put him flat on his back for a week in October—and two stood convicted of contempt. It was not until December 15, fully six months after the trial start date, that twelve jurors and eight alternates were seated in what was the longest jury selection process in California history.

  WITH THE DEFENSE NOW FULLY AND PUBLICLY AT WAR WITH THE PROSECUTION and judge, another fro
nt opened up with an entirely different warring party. To say that the Norco 3 and the San Diego deputies running the Vista jail had gotten their relationship off on the wrong foot would be an understatement. That the deputies would be unhappy with a bunch of cop killers from Riverside crashing their facility was entirely predictable. However, George Smith and Chris Harven had already established up in Riverside that they were not the type to take any mistreatment lying down. With the help of their attorneys, the inmates fought back with a steady stream of complaints, petitions, and demands. Through most of the jury selection process, the feuding between the two sides had been conducted outside the courtroom of Judge Hennigan and included mostly petty incidents. However, that was about to change in an altogether unexpected way.

  On November 30, 1981, Clayton Adams had a representative for the Vista jail hauled in front of Hennigan to protest a disciplinary action that had been taken by the jail against George Smith. The reason this particular matter deserved the attention of Hennigan, Adams contended, was that his client had been denied due process and was now being held alone in “deadlock” isolation for the infraction, thus inhibiting his ability to participate in his own defense. Although Hennigan would punt the matter back to Smith and the jail to resolve, the official “Inmate Status Report” documenting the November 26 incident was introduced into the hearing. According to the deputy filing the report, the following events occurred: