Federal prosecutors are asking a judge to require defense attorneys to reveal any background or character information that might result in a lesser sentence for the suspect charged in a deadly shooting spree at Los Angeles International Airport, court papers filed Monday show.
Although Paul Anthony Ciancia’s federal death penalty trial – for the killing of a TSA agent and the wounding of three other people – isn’t scheduled to begin until next summer — nearly three years after the crime took place — the government is requesting a court order requiring disclosures of mitigating factors and penalty phase witnesses no later than July 23, 2016, one month prior to the commencement of jury selection.
“Pretrial disclosure of this information is necessary to effectuate the government’s statutory right of rebuttal, promote truth-seeking in the sentencing hearing, ensure fairness and completeness in the jury selection process, eliminate unwarranted surprise, and alleviate the risk of delay resulting from non-disclosure,” the motion says.
Federal Public Defender Hilary Potashner did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A Sept. 28 hearing is set to discuss the matter before U.S. District Judge Philip S. Gutierrez.
Prosecutors maintain that without the disclosures, Ciancia, now 25, “will have had nearly three years prior to trial to painstakingly craft his responses to the aggravating factors, while the government will have little or no time to investigate and respond to a heretofore untold number of prospective mitigators.”
“Such an inequitable playing field would permit a trial by ambush and improperly skew the presentation of evidence during the penalty phase,” according to the government’s motion.
Although Potashner had requested a December 2016 trial date, Assistant U.S. Attorney Joanna Curtis argued that a delay past August 2016 would be unfair to the victims in the case, including the widow of federal Transportation Security Administration Officer Gerardo Hernandez. He was killed in the Nov. 1, 2013, attack that also left three other people wounded — two other TSA workers and one traveler.
Defense filings have signaled that Ciancia’s lawyers will raise mental health issues before the jury in an effort to save their client from execution.
Authorities allege Ciancia walked into Terminal 3 at LAX and opened fire with a semiautomatic rifle. He was allegedly carrying dozens of rounds of ammunition, along with a handwritten, signed note saying he wanted to kill TSA agents and “instill fear in their traitorous minds.”
Witnesses to the shooting said the gunman asked them whether they worked for the TSA, and if they said no, he moved on.
The New Jersey native, who had been living in the Los Angeles area for about 18 months, was shot in the head and leg during a gun battle with airport police. He is jailed without bail at the federal detention center downtown.
Prosecutors previously told the judge they had accumulated more than 10,000 pages and 150 DVDs of discovery in the case, including material collected during a probe of Ciancia’s background in the small town of Pennsville, New Jersey, which they had presented to the defense.
— City News Service