Mass-Murder Mess

One after another, the orchards near Yuba City, Calif., yielded their grisly secrets. Using shovels, a tractor and eventually even a light plane with an infra-red camera, police unearthed 25 decomposing bodies, mostly itinerant farm laborers, all hacked to death with a machete-like weapon. It was the worst series of murders in U.S. history.

Even before the last bodies were found, police arrested Juan Corona, 37, a Mexican farm-labor contractor who was a churchgoer, homeowner, and father of four girls. "We are sure that he committed the murders," said Sheriff Roy Whiteaker. That was 17 months ago. Last week, one month after the prosecution opened its case, no one was quite so sure of anything.

In fact, Richard Hawk, 40, an aggressive defense attorney from the San Francisco area, not only entered a not-guilty plea but sued Sutler County for $350 million (twice its assessed valuation) for slander and false arrest. The entire investigation, Hawk insisted, had been "thoroughly bungled."

Worried that the sheriff's office had created a hostile climate of opinion, Hawk made his charges despite a court-ordered ban on talking to the press. That won him the first of eight contempt citations calling for up to 40 days in jail and $3,700 in fines. "I had to," says Hawk, "to take the pressure off Juan." And his tactics did help to turn Corona from an ogre into something of a hero. When the trial opened, Mexican-American pickets marched with signs saying JUSTICE FOR JUAN CORONA.

Grave Errors. Police had originally been led to Corona when receipts made out to him were found in one grave. Then they found blood on some of Corona's possessions. But the case against him soon proved to be less than ironclad. The prosecution admitted that some bodies had been improperly labeled, and no one could tell which had been found where. Blood samples taken from knives belonging to Corona were too fragmentary to be connected with the victims. Tire tracks at one gravesite were said by police to have come from one of Corona's trucks, until experts belatedly reported that their tracks did not match. No effort was made to take fingerprints from cigarette butts found near the graves. Officials even cut fingertips off some corpses to preserve fingerprints, then mislabeled the vials in which they were stored.

At a cost of several thousand dollars, the state built a 7-ft. by 10-ft. map of the area, complete with blinking lights marking each gravesite, only to have police witnesses give varying locations for five graves. Another witness could not say when he had seen Corona near a grave, though he had earlier given police an exact date. (Corona himself said he was sick in bed when some of the murders were committed.) As the contradictions piled up, Judge Richard Patton repeatedly summoned the lawyers into his chambers to thrash out problems. Patton has done most of the thrashing, citing not only Hawk but each of the two prosecutors for contempt. The judge also pronounced himself "outraged" by the withholding of 1,650 pages of documents, including toxicology and coroner's reports, that the defense was entitled to see. In one closed session, Special Prosecutor Bart Williams, 39, a private attorney hired to supervise the county's case, finally admitted that he had "reasonable doubt" about Corona's guilt.

To Hawk, that seemed enough to get Corona out on bail--after more than 500 days of incarceration (and two heart attacks). Indeed, at the courtroom hearing, with the jury absent, Judge Patton excoriated the prosecution for what "almost approaches dereliction of duty. I just don't understand how [the case] could have been prepared in this manner." Then Prosecutor Williams claimed he no longer had reasonable doubt, partly because he had just found that he really did have tire tracks that matched Corona's truck after all; the correct tire-track specimen had simply been mislaid. "I am almost incredulous," exploded Patton.

But he refused bail, and the trial goes on. Hawk will continue to argue that inexperienced authorities panicked under the glare of publicity. He claims that the murders probably were committed by a homosexual (some of the bodies were found with pants down) and points out that Corona has been found to be "hopelessly heterosexual."

With all the evidence promised by both sides, the trial is expected to last more than six months. The question is whether after so much confusion the jury can be expected to find its way to any semblance of truth.

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