Public Interest Investigations

Judge Indicates He Will Reverse Death Sentence -- Defendant Dubbed a 'One-Man Crime Spree' by High Court -- Ruling in 1-2 Weeks

Los Angeles Daily Journal
January 20, 2000
Author: Martin Berg, Daily Journal Staff Writer

Steve Lamar Fields, once described by the state Supreme Court as a "one-man crime spree," had lost all appeals of his 1979 conviction and death sentence, for the murder and robbery of a University of Southern California librarian.

Until now.

A self-described hard-line federal judge has said he will reverse Fields' death sentence because of a claim of juror misconduct.

Fields' lawyer, David S. Olson, special counsel to Agapy, Levyn Halling in Los Angeles, is a business litigator who has been working on a federal petition for writ of habeas corpus for seven years. It's his first death penalty case.

Olson said Wednesday that U.S. District Judge Dickran Tevrizian said at the end of a hearing Tuesday he would reverse the jury's death verdict.

Wait and See Attitude

The ruling does not upset Fields' conviction. The same jury also convicted Fields - who had been on parole at the time of his 1978 crime wave - of kidnapping, robbery, rape and forced oral copulation of a USC student, and kidnapping, robbing, raping and forcibly orally copulating two other women.

His client was "relieved" to hear of the judge's ruling, Olson said.

Noting that state prosecutors frequently appeal such reversals - which are unusual - Olson said he was taking "a wait and see attitude."

But Olson was cautiously optimistic. "Judge Tevrizian is an extremely conservative judge. He described himself as a hard-liner. And the facts are undisputed, and the law is overwhelming."

A spokesman for Attorney General Bill Lockyer, Nathan Barankin, said Wednesday state prosecutors were reviewing the case and had not decided whether to appeal Tevrizian's ruling.

Interviewed Jury Foreman

Opposing Fields' habeas petition, state prosecutors argued unsuccessfully that the juror misconduct was insufficiently prejudicial to overcome the jury's death verdict.

Key to Tevrizian's ruling was Olson's decision to ask for funds to interview the jurors in Fields' case. Olson, who specializes in cases involving employment disputes, intellectual property and trade secrets, said he was not necessarily looking for misconduct when he sent an investigator to talk with the jurors. "We just wanted to talk to the people who had deliberated on his case," Olson said. "It just bothered me that nobody had ever gone to talk to them."

The investigator Olson hired, Keith Rohman of Public Interest Investigations, said when he went to interview the former jury foreman, now a 75-year-old La Canada-Flintridge resident, the man brought out the detailed notes he had kept from the trial.

Olson said jurors, in their first day of deliberations, were split on sentencing Fields to life in prison without parole, or death. That evening, the foreman went home and researched the death penalty in the Bible and a dictionary. The next day, the jury preliminarily voted 7 to 5 for life in prison. Then the foreman passed around his notes on his research - and the jury voted unanimously for death.

Jurors are prohibited from considering matters outside the record in their deliberations, Olson said. "That kind of consideration of extraneous matters taints the jury's verdict. Here we had hard proof of real prejudice that it caused, in that the jurors had voted 7 to 5 for life without parole before they discussed the foreman's notes."

Tevrizian rejected a number of other claims by Fields, including other allegations of juror misconduct.

Olson said the judge indicated he would issue a written ruling within a week or two.

The state Supreme Court referred to Fields as a "one-man crime spree," in 1983, in a ruling affirming Fields' conviction and sentence.

© The Daily Journal Corporation. All rights reserved.