Corona Retrial

A 25-murder verdict is reversed

Before Labor Contractor Juan Corona was convicted in 1973 for one of the greatest mass murders in memory--hacking and bludgeoning to death 25 itinerant farm workers around the sun-baked orchards of Yuba City. Calif.--his lawyer tried a stunning tactic. Defense Attorney Richard Hawk. 45. offered hardly any defense at all. Though he questioned a few of the 116 witnesses summoned by the prosecution, he called none himself and his summation lasted a bare seven minutes. In spite of that, the jury's first vote was 7 to 5 for acquittal, and it took a total of 16 ballots and 46 hours to find the Mexican-born Corona, now 44, guilty on all 25 murder counts.

Last week, nearly 5 1/2 years after that verdict, a California court of appeal reversed the conviction and ordered a new trial. The court seemed to have little doubt about Corona's guilt. It noted an "elaborately woven web of circumstantial evidence connecting appellant to the crimes and unerringly pointing to his participation in their commission." Even so, said the three-judge panel, the fact remains that Corona had a history of mental illness; yet his lawyer "failed to raise the obvious alternative defenses of mental incompetence and/or diminished capacity and/or legal insanity." Why? Because, said Hawk, discussing Corona's mental state would have provided an explanation for the murders and thereby helped the state to prove its case.

What seemed to upset the appellate court most, however, was the fact that Corona, unable to pay the heavy legal fees for a case of such magnitude, granted Hawk exclusive literary and dramatic property rights to his life story in return for the lawyer's services. Even before the trial began. Hawk had hired a professional writer and negotiated a contract with Macmillan for a book about the case. This created a conflict of interest, said the court, that resulted in "an outrageous abrogation" of Corona's rights and "rendered the trial a farce and mockery."

No date has been set for a new trial.

When it is, Juan Corona, who remains in Soledad prison, will be represented by a new legal team.

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