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Convictions Upheld Despite Prosecutorial Misconduct
Court of Appeal Holds Evidence of Killer’s Guilt Was So Strong That Errors Do Not Mandate Reversal
Kimber Cooley, Staff Writer
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HORACE VAN VAULTZ JR. murderer |
Prosecutorial misconduct, including a violation of an evidentiary ruling and combative questioning during cross-examination, was insufficient to establish prejudicial error where there was overwhelming evidence of the defendant’s guilt in two murders, including evidence that his DNA was found on the victims and on a victim of an uncharged murder, Div. Six of this district’s Court of Appeal held Friday.
Presiding Justice Arthur Gilbert wrote the unpublished opinion affirming the judgment of conviction by Los Angeles Superior Court Judge George G. Lomeli. Justices Kenneth R. Yegan and Tari L. Cody joined in the opinion.
In August 2022, Horace Van Vaultz Jr. was found guilty by a Los Angeles jury of two special circumstance murders from the 1980s—the 1986 murder of Selena Kenough, a 21-year old mother who was raped and whose body was dumped near an apartment building in Montclair, and the 1986 murder of Mary Duggan, a 22-year old Reseda resident who was also raped and whose body was found in the trunk of her car in Burbank.
The cases went cold for decades before the police used DNA evidence from a genealogical website to identify Vaultz.
Detectives submitted DNA samples recovered from the victims’ bodies and crime scenes to the genealogical company, which found a match to a relative of Vaultz. The detectives then confirmed the match with a new sample from Vaultz himself.
Los Angeles Deputy District Attorney Beth Silverman prosecuted the case and Pasadena attorney Damon Lamont Hobdy represented Vaultz.
Exclusion of Evidence
Gilbert explained that in order for prosecutorial misconduct to justify overturning a conviction, a court must find that deceptive or reprehensible methods were used to persuade the jury and that it was reasonably probable that the defendant would have obtained a more favorable result in the absence of the error.
Before trial, Vaultz successfully moved to exclude evidence that he peeped over a fence into a residence where a teenage girl was living.
Despite the evidentiary ruling, Silverman asked the defendant about it during his testimony. Lomeli sustained an objection.
The prosecutor then explained her questioning was related to whether the defendant used aliases, which Lomeli said he would allow. Silverman proceeded to ask Vaultz if he used a fake name to get into a teenage girl’s house, and the judge again sustained a defense objection.
Gilbert opined that this exchange was clear misconduct, but found that it was harmless. He wrote:
“It appears that the prosecutor deliberately violated the trial court’s ruling excluding the evidence of the peeping incident. That is a serious breach of prosecutorial ethics and was also entirely unnecessary. The evidence against Vaultz in the murder of three women was so strong that evidence of peeping over a fence had no effect on the result. The misconduct was unnecessary but in the context of this case, harmless.”
Statements as Misconduct
Gilbert noted other possible examples of prosecutorial misconduct arising out of the heated cross-examination of Vaultz by Silverman, who admitted to being “like a dog with a bone.”
During questioning of the defendant, Silverman asked “Do you think [the jurors are] all a bunch of morons?” and “What’s wrong with you?”
At one point, she responded to Vaultz by saying “Okay. Another excuse.”
When Vaultz began to cry during direct testimony, Silverman was heard saying, “Here we go,” a comment she apologized for during closing argument.
Gilbert conceded that such remarks might constitute misconduct, but found that any transgression was far outweighed by the strong evidence against Vaultz. He said:
“Although we cannot condone the prosecutor’s remarks, given the state of the evidence against Vaultz, any misconduct was harmless.”
The jurist noted that the case turned on DNA evidence and Vaultz did not challenge that evidence and even admitted in closing that his DNA was found in all three murdered women.
He concluded:
“The evidence of Vaultz’s guilt was so overwhelming that the alleged errors here, taken separately or together, do not mandate reversal.”
Gilbert outright dismissed an argument that Silverman attempted to intimidate Vaultz by “standing too close to him” during the trial, which the defendant also unsuccessfully argued before the trial court, saying:
“Vaultz cannot seriously believe that we would overturn a double murder conviction supported by DNA and overwhelming corroborative evidence because the prosecutor was standing too close.”
Although Gilbert did not find reversible error, he did direct both Silverman and Hobdy to standards of professional conduct. He wrote:
“[W]e in the legal profession are human and may recoil when exposed to the facts in certain cases. This is particularly true in criminal cases. Yet we have an obligation to follow the standards demanded of our respective professions. This is particularly the case for prosecutors.”
The justice continued:
“Prosecutors who violate their oath of office whether meaning to or not, run the risk of assuring a defense verdict in some cases that otherwise could result in a different outcome. As we stressed in this opinion, the overwhelming evidence of guilt compelled the result this panel reached.”
However, Gilbert also directed comments to Hobdy, saying:
“Defense counsel also ran afoul of his obligation not to mischaracterize evidence. All in the legal profession must keep in mind the rules of conduct that set our standards. Doing so ensures public confidence in our legal institutions.”
The case is People v. Vaultz, B323590.
Silverman drew wide press attention in 2017 when she and Deputy District Attorney Tannaz Mokayef received a $700,000 settlement from the County of Los Angeles of their lawsuit based on sexual harassment by their former supervisor, Gary Hearnsberger, now on inactive bar status.
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—Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorneys Marguerite Rizzo (left) and Beth Silverman are seen in a 2021 photo accepting the Centurion Award for Excellence in Cold Case Investigations with Technical Support conferred by the Peace Officers Association of Los Angeles County for their work in uncovering the culprit in the 1986 killing of a Burbank woman and a 1981 slaying of a woman found in Montclair. On Friday, Div. Six of the Court of Appeal for this district affirmed the murder convictions of the perpetrator, Horace Van Vaultz Jr., despite trial misconduct on the part of Silverman. |
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