The Best American Crime Reporting 2009 - Jeffrey Toobin [95]
Associate Justice Carol A. Corrigan interrupted Turner’s presentation to ask, “Are we to ignore all of his [racist] literature?”
Yes, he replied. “We don’t know if he believed it…. Lindberg was an extremely angry individual who was caught up in ideas of death and destruction, but neither indicated his anger was directed to nonwhites or Asians specifically.”
To bolster his point, the public defender claimed that poor lighting conditions at the high-school tennis courts would have prevented Lindberg from determining the race of the person Rollerblading on the night of the murder. During the trial, the jury considered and dismissed this point. And it didn’t seem to impress Corrigan, either.
She interrupted Turner’s presentation again. This time, her words may have been more of a statement than a question:
“How about this,” Corrigan said. “Was he close enough to tell [Ly was Asian] while he was stabbing him?”
Turner had no good answer.
The supreme court is expected to issue its ruling this summer.
R. SCOTT MOXLEY is senior editor for news and investigations at OC Weekly, a Village Voice Media alt-weekly in Orange County, California. He’s won national awards for exposing both a deceitful congressman and a powerful, crooked sheriff. In 2007, he was awarded a top prize by the Los Angeles Press Club for revealing how a convicted felon/ ex-drug addict used the Americans with Disabilities Act to enrich himself. In 2006—the year his coverage of the sensational Haidl Gang Rape case won national attention—his investigation into a carjacking/robbery case proved that police and prosecutors sent the wrong man to prison. In 2005, FBI agents relied on his articles to arrest a wealthy Newport Beach doctor who was charging HIV and AIDS patients as much as nine thousand dollars per shot but injecting them with common saline solution. In 2004, a grand jury used his exclusive work to indict an assistant sheriff on abuse of office charges. In 2001, he helped free a young woman facing the death penalty from jail after proving sheriff’s investigators doctored key crime-scene evidence at a killing. In 2000, he proved that the newly elected district attorney’s best friend was a longtime organized crime suspect. He lives in Southern California.
Coda
After the article appeared, Gunner Jay Lindberg wrote me a letter from San Quentin State Prison’s death row. He expressed sorrow, writing, “I’ve never denied that I took Mr. Thien Minh Ly’s life—but not for the reasons I was convicted. It was not a robbery nor was it a hate crime. I do believe I should pay for my crimes as I took his life, so I see my punishment as justice. I know if it were someone in my family I’d want justice and no amount of ‘sorry’ would change that. I’m nowhere near perfect, but I’m not a monster. I’ve done a terrible wrong not only to Mr. Ly but his family and I can’t take it back.” So why did he stab Ly twenty-two times? He told me it was merely “reckless actions.”
In August 2007, the California Supreme Court issued a sixty-nine-page ruling that rejected Lindberg’s arguments against his “special circumstances” convictions. The justices wrote “there is substantial evidence” that Ly was murdered during the commission of a robbery and a hate crime.
Lindberg is one of 680 men awaiting lethal injection in San Quentin. He says he spends most of his days creating art and writing pen pals.
Members of Ly’s family continue to live in Southern California but, even after twelve years, still have difficulty discussing events.
Stephen Rodrick
DEAD MAN’S FLOAT
FROM New York magazine
IT ENDED IN THE POOL. The whole tragic cartoon.
That morning, it was last Labor Day, Seth and Phyllis Tobias woke up together in the master bedroom of their not-quite-finished dream home. The $5 million, 6,700-square-foot mansion is located in the Bear’s Club, a gated community built on a golf course in Jupiter, Florida, twenty minutes north of Palm Beach. Designed in the style of Addison Mizner, the house is very big and very faux—faux Spanish architectural