Hanks moved over to the photo of Evans. “Now the same four men are cornered. What do they do? They line up behind the truck. They walk down that road, and they kill Jim Evans. Evans shot Christopher Harven, managed to get him.” Hanks paused and shook his head. “Damn shame he didn’t kill him.”
Hanks was particularly galled at what he saw as Harven’s complete lack of remorse, citing Chris’s joke about the bullet still in his body, within minutes of being told of the death of an officer. “You can even hear at the start of the case about how flip he is about the whole thing. He [Malmberg] was getting the vital statistics out of Christopher Harven:
‘How much do you weigh, Chris?’
‘You mean with or without the lead?’”
In closing, Hanks stood directly in front of the jury box. “Ladies and gentlemen, the reason we’re here is because those three men are responsible for the death of James Evans. They killed him. They each had a finger on that trigger. They all pulled the round that went through his head. Each one of those men killed him. I don’t ask you to convict them because of what you may consider some obnoxious or unprofessional or offensive conduct that may have gone on during the trial. I ask you to convict them because they are guilty.”
WITH THE CONCLUSION OF HANKS’S STATEMENT ON THE AFTERNOON OF July 8, 1982, both sides had finally rested their cases in the guilt phase of the trial of the Norco 3. Hennigan announced he was dropping one incidental charge due to insufficient evidence, reducing the total number of felony counts to forty-five. After four and a half hours of jury instructions from the judge, the jurors were transported directly from the courthouse to a motel in nearby Oceanside where they would be sequestered until reaching a final verdict. Armed United States marshals were posted at the hotel for their protection as well as to see that there were no violations of the sequestration. Although the yearlong trial had strained them to the limit and they were anxious to get the ordeal over, foreman Paul Dillinger guided them through a methodical, thorough, and thoughtful deliberation that lasted for fifteen days.
Just after 7:00 p.m. on the evening of Friday, July 23, Dillinger sent word to the court that they had reached a verdict on all 135 counts. Hennigan had ordered defense and prosecution teams to remain close enough to reach the courthouse within thirty minutes, but now the judge was nowhere to be found. Ruddy and Hanks rushed to the apartment complex in which the judge was living and were met there by a marshal from the court. After jumping a security gate and pounding on the apartment door, the marshal had just decided to kick in the door in case there was a medical emergency when Hennigan walked up. He had been out for an evening stroll and lost track of time in idle conversation with a stranger about flowers. With the judge located, they jumped into cars and raced toward the courthouse. In the Vista jail, guards brought the three defendants their suits. They were quickly loaded into a transport van, their mood a mix of anxiety, fatalism, and vague hopefulness.
By 7:45 p.m., all the players were assembled in the courtroom, along with a packed spectator galley that included friends and relatives of the defendants, all having been screened through metal detectors before entering. Seven armed marshals positioned themselves throughout corridors and inside the courtroom.
“Mr. Dillinger, you are the foreman. Do I understand that you have reached verdicts on all the matters?”
“Yes, we have.”
“Will you hand them to the bailiff and we’ll ask the bailiff to give them to the Court.” For five agonizing minutes, an expressionless David Hennigan leafed through the thick pile of papers while the courtroom looked on in dead silence. When he was done, he turned to clerk Geni Hays. “I’ll hand you the verdict sheets and ask you to read them. I’ll hand you first separately those relating to count 46 and ask you to read those first,” Hennigan said, deciding to begin with the most serious charge of all: murder in the first degree of deputy Jim Evans.
“In the Superior Court of the State of California, in and for the county of San Diego, case number CRN 6940, The People of the State of California, Plaintiff, versus George Wayne Smith, Christopher Gregory Harven, and Russell Aaron Harven, Defendants.
“Verdict: We, the jury in the above entitled action, find the defendant George Wayne Smith guilty of violation of section 187 of the penal code, the murder of James Bernard Evans, and fix the degree as murder in the first degree.”
In the gallery, Walter Smith, who had attended every day of his son’s trial believing in his heart that George had never killed anyone, looked on without expression as the jury was individually polled as to their verdict.
The clerk continued. “We, the jury in the above entitled action, find the defendant Christopher Gregory Harven guilty of violation of section 187 of the penal code, the murder of James Bernard Evans, and fix the degree as murder in the first degree.”
To no one’s surprise, the Jerry Cohen defense had failed.
“We, the jury in the above entitled action, find the defendant Russell Aaron Harven guilty of violation of section 187 of the penal code, the murder of James Bernard Evans, and fix the degree as murder in the first degree.”
The courtroom remained silent and the defendants and their attorneys expressionless as the clerk read the verdicts on all 135 counts. Like the trial itself, the process seemed to go on forever. When she was done, the defendants each stood guilty of all forty-five charges against them. The jury also found that the murder of Evans had been committed under “special circumstances” that qualified the convicted men for the death penalty.
Outside the courtroom, Jay Hanks gave his investigator Joe Curfman a hug. “I was confident the jury would see through the farce and sham that constituted the defense in this case,” he said. Clayton Adams said the guilty verdicts on all charges were “a total shock” and that the jury “went for the throat.” Michael Lloyd also professed shock but refused to label the Jerry Cohen defense a complete flop. “They had a doubt in their minds,” he said. “But they didn’t know if they understood what the law says about reasonable doubt.” Alan Olson said he was “surprised and disappointed” by the prosecution’s clean sweep. However, he did see one small victory in the special finding that Manny Delgado had fired the bullet that killed Evans. “They didn’t buy my arguments,” he said, “but they didn’t buy Hanks’s either.”
When contacted by a reporter, D. J. McCarty said he was “dancing” at news of the verdict. “I feel relieved,” he said of the jury’s special finding that the bullet that killed Evans had not come from his gun. But he was not surprised. “Hey, I was up there. I saw what was happening.” Mary Evans told a reporter, “Since the jury has been out I’ve had a lot of sleepless nights. I’m glad. I could jump up and down. Maybe I shouldn’t feel this glad, but I feel glad.” “It’s been a long ordeal,” Walter Smith said, looking noticeably drained but loyal to his boy to the end. “There is one thing I know, and my son knows: He did not kill anyone.”
AFTER QUELLING A THREATENED WALKOUT BY EXHAUSTED JURORS OVER A $2.50 per day cut in compensation by the county, Judge Hennigan commenced with the penalty phase on July 27, 1982. “Mr. Olson, you may make an opening statement and then call your first witness.”
Alan Olson called a procession of family, friends, neighbors, and even Russell’s fourth-grade teacher who described him as a shy and sensitive child who had struggled to come to terms with his diabetic condition. Olson continued to call the disease a death sentence, and that handing him an additional one would be cruel and pointless. The condition “had robbed him of at least one third of his life span. The general consensus among doctors is that Russell has ten to fifteen years to live, and he’s going to die a very distressing death.”
The psychiatric professionals who had evaluated Russ soon after the crime portrayed him as a follower, easily talked into anything and unable to foresee the consequences of his actions. While still not able to specifically accuse his older brother of having pressured Russ into participating in the robbery, Olson was able to indirectly, but
clearly, get the point across that Chris had dominated and tormented Russ all their lives. From there, the jury was left to connect the dots.
The most puzzling of the penalty cases was the one that was never presented. Chris Harven simply gave up. He instructed Lloyd that no witnesses be called on his behalf. There was no point trying to convince those people of anything. They can kill me if they want.
Lloyd convinced Chris that he should at least present a closing defense argument. Lloyd went all-in on the Jerry Cohen defense to the jury, saying that Harven should be sentenced to life “so I can find Jerry Cohen and prove to you that you were wrong.” To punctuate just how wrong they felt the jury was, the two refused to stand at any time during the penalty phase when jurors entered the courtroom. Lloyd explained to reporter James Richardson that he and Harven had “no respect for the jury. I asked them to follow the law and they didn’t do that. They let their passions get away from them and they ignored solid evidence to the contrary.” It was a perplexing antagonization of a panel who held Harven’s life in their hands.
Lloyd concluded his comments by saying the penalty phase was meaningless anyhow because his client, like his younger brother, had already received a death penalty. Except in this case, the sentence had been self-imposed by an act of courage. “When Chris got up and testified against Jerry Cohen, he’s bound to die in prison.”
Clayton Adams brought to the stand an array of immediate family, in-laws, ex-girlfriends, and childhood friends to vouch for George Smith’s history of honesty, trustworthiness, and devotion to God. Rosie’s brother Ralph Miranda recounted their Calvary Chapel ocean baptism together at Corona Del Mar in 1973. He said how much Rosie leaving him had hurt George. Michael Fantino talked about writing praise songs with George, hoping one of the bands on Calvary’s Maranatha record label would record one.
Hannelore Smith (now Palmer) said George was compassionate, gentle, a loving father, generous to a fault. When asked if her daughter was in the courtroom, a relative in the spectator gallery lifted up five-year-old Monica for the jury to see. But Hanne had also found many of his beliefs strange. “Did you ever feel toward the end of your marriage he was starting to get weird?” Hanks asked on cross-examination. “Like I say, I did not agree with his wanting to go to the mountains. It seemed weird at the time.”
A grave and defeated-looking Walter Smith fought back tears as he tried to explain to the jury that George had been an accomplished, loving, and loyal son who had done nothing but try to help others his entire life. He described how two failed marriages had left him devastated and preoccupied with the End Times prophecies of the book of Revelation. “Why did he become involved?” Clayton Adams asked him. “That’s a question I have asked myself a thousand times. The only logical answer I can come up with is George was trying to achieve his utopian goal, to get a place out of state in the mountains, take his mother and dad, family and friends.”
Others told how George had brought them to know the Lord as their Savior in an honest attempt to save their souls. “He talked about the Lord with me every chance we got,” his brother-in-law Michael Halbach said. George had urged Halbach to help him find a mine shaft somewhere where they could grow food and protect themselves from roaming hordes of marauders. His sister Patricia sobbed on the stand speaking of how her loyal and dependable brother’s religious beliefs intensified in ways that affected even his appearance. “He told me he wanted to grow his hair long because Samson got his strength from his hair.” George urged her to bring her family to ride out the nuclear apocalypse in the pit at the Mira Loma house. “We could even bring our animals.”
With all the witnesses now called, a man the jury thought they’d never hear from rose to argue why they should not put him to death. Prior to the start of their penalty case, Adams requested that George Smith be named co-counsel, allowing him to question his own witnesses and participate in closing arguments. The motion was granted by Hennigan over the objections of Jay Hanks. Even after months of trial and the hours of family and friends trying to tell them who George Smith really was, the man behind everything remained a puzzle to all.
It may have been in his best interest for George to present himself as a complicated man driven by a mix of sincerely held religious beliefs and a complex psychological makeup beyond his ability to control. For most of his life, he had somehow been able to channel extreme intelligence and a personality pathology that included elements of grandiosity, self-righteousness, and self-importance into admirable achievements and acts of compassion toward those around him. He had been responsible and self-sufficient from an early age, dutifully served his country and the God of his understanding, been a good provider for his family and a law-abiding contributor to society. But when put under the pressure of downturns in his life, the deeply ingrained personality traits that had served him so well suddenly conspired to propel him into a crime of horrendous consequences.
But in the end, it was not Smith’s inclination nor within his ability to untangle psychological complexities he could not recognize within himself. When the time came for George to tell the people who sat in judgment of him who he really was, all George Smith could do was try to convince them of his beliefs and how they justified his actions.
“Good morning. I ask your indulgence in this. I’m not learned as counsel who knows how to present something like this, but I’ll do the best I can. First and foremost, George Smith did not kill anyone; did not attempt to kill anybody; did not want to kill anybody.”
His status as co-counsel dictated that George refer to himself only in the third person, lending an additional tone of arrogance to his presentation.
“Mr. Hanks does me a great honor by saying he [George Smith] is a prophet, that he was inspired by God. God has no purpose in this. There is no justification for this. George Smith was wrong. Jesus Christ doesn’t condone this action, that’s why George Smith has been whipped severely, but found pardoned under Christ.
“George Smith is no man’s leader. He treated every man as an equal and exalted himself to no one. He says George Smith values his life above others, but you have heard testimony time and time again, George Smith’s main concern was of others rather than of himself. You have heard evidence about George Smith’s childhood. It was an average childhood. Nothing different. George Smith worked with the school newspaper, played in sports, and sang in the choir. Those are not the acts or the personality of someone who is a monster. George Smith is not a monster.”
Smith went on to tell how his experience in the military taught him to recognize just how close mankind had brought itself to the brink of destruction. “George Smith has extensive military knowledge because of his MOS [Military Occupational Specialty], and the stuff he was taught was all classified. So he knows the reality of nuclear warfare, and people do not know how close we actually are to it. Yes, that made him religious, for he felt and was certain that weapons of war are only made for one purpose, and that is to be used. The hole in the backyard was not for, as Mr. Hanks asks you to believe, the last-ditch stand to fight police, or whatever; it was simply a bomb shelter.”
George opened a version of the King James Bible. “I wish at this time to read a section out of Revelations 20, Your Honor, since Revelations was brought up continually in this matter.”
He read the passage he felt clarified his actual beliefs. “Then I saw an angel come down from Heaven with the key of the abyss in his hand . . .”
He closed the book and veered into the realm of esoteric theological debate. “You heard testimony relating that George Smith thought that he would be left behind. What I have just read to you now is different. It doesn’t say that. George Smith has read the Bible cover to cover. He has read many, many, many books on many, many, many different people’s opinion as to the Bible. Mr. Hanks would have you believe that I was some kind of mad prophet, but then Hal Lindsey and Chuck Smith and Carruthers and all the others would be mad prophets, according to him. I understand Margaret MacDonald’s th
eory of the Rapture, which you will not find anywhere in the Bible.”
He said his confession on the mountainside was nothing less than the admirable act of a dying man. “When you look at George Smith’s character and you know his personality, the evidence shows that when faced with death, knowing he is going to die, wanting to die at that point, that he would take the blame for everything under the sun. And that is what George Smith did.”
Smith called D. J. McCarty “a paradox” of contradictory statements and accused SWAT members of murdering Manny Delgado. “Sure as we’re all here today, you in your hearts know that they murdered him and the justification is that because we’re criminals supposedly. But them sticking that shotgun in his side and pulling the trigger, does not justify, nonetheless, but it’s still murder.”
It was Smith’s contention that if he had really wanted to kill anyone, he could have. “George Smith has been around guns most of his life; he is what you call a crack shot. When it came time to go to heaven, he was not going to go to it with the blood of Americans on his hands. When it came to the quick, he would rather shoot the car than the man and that is consistent with George Smith’s religious convictions. He’s not a murderer. He’s not a killer. The United States’ enemies are George Smith’s enemies. The Christian enemy is George Smith’s enemy. Communism and dictatorships are George Smith’s enemies, not the American people.”
“Why I went?” Smith began, with the first and only explanation of his actions the jury would hear from the defense during the entire trial. “It is a complex thing. It’s nothing I am proud of. I am sorry I went, and I am sorry all this happened. I guess the closest theory to it would be when my father testified that George Smith was looking for a utopia. Errors in his ways are there. He knows he was wrong. Do not take my lack of fear as a contempt of this Court or these body of people. I accept what I cannot change. I cannot change your verdict. I have no ill will for any person here. I have no ill will for the Court. I have no ill will for Mr. Hanks.”
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