Jurors who convicted an already imprisoned murderer of killing a young woman during a rape in Glendale 37 years ago began hearing evidence Monday to determine whether to recommend a death sentence or life in prison without parole.
Deputy District Attorney Jonathan Chung told the jury that Darrel Mark Gurule, who was found guilty Wednesday of first-degree murder for the shooting death of 23-year-old Barbara Ballman, had committed multiple other crimes and violent acts.
He showed the eight-man, four-woman panel a photo of Ballman, whose naked body was found in the early morning hours of Sept. 21, 1979, inside her Volkswagen sedan parked across from Edison Elementary School.
That image was followed quickly by a photograph of a bloodied Roberto Bruno, who Gurule was convicted of murdering. Bruno was shot in the head in 1987.
Chung said witnesses and transcripts would show that Gurule, 57, also kidnapped and sexually assaulted another woman in 1977, assaulted two brothers in 1979, robbed a man in 1982 and received stolen goods in 1986.
The prosecutor then previewed the defense case.
“They’re going to present his childhood,” Chung said. “They may say he was from a terribly abusive family.”
Chung said he also expected a defense expert to testify that CAT scans show Gurule has “organic defects in his brain.”
But if all the acts of violence and other aggravating circumstances outweigh the mitigating circumstances, then “you can and you should sentence Mr. Gurule to death,” Chung concluded.
Defense attorney Philip Peng asked jurors to “choose life.”
“At minimum, Darrel Gurule will die in prison. He’s never going to get out,” Peng said.
During his 10,592 days in custody, Gurule “has never threatened anyone, never harmed anyone,” the defense attorney told jurors.
The question is “does Darrel die on God’s time or is he going to die on man’s time?” he said.
Peng reminded jurors of a comment he said the judge made during jury instructions, telling them the penalty phase is “not a weighing of tears.” However, “childhood matters,” the attorney said.
Gurule grew up in Echo Park in the 1960s and ’70s, when the area was controlled by warring gangs, Peng said.
“Darrel’s father was an extremely vicious man with heavy hands,” who regularly beat his wife Lydia and their eight children, the defense attorney said.
On July 4, 1973, Gurule was found with six of his siblings, ages 4-17, in what police had thought was an abandoned house in Glendale, devoid of furniture other than a few mattresses. Officers found “rotting food all over the floor” and a “kitchen floor covered with newspaper and feces,” Peng said.
Gurule’s father was “out of the picture” by then and his mother was out on a date.
Peng said Gurule’s oldest brother, a sister, an aunt and a neighbor will all testify, as will Jeanne Woodford, a former warden of San Quentin State Prison.
The mother of Gurule’s son will tell jurors about “the person that he became after he was locked up in prison for the rest of his life,” Peng said. “This penalty phase is about two different Darrel’s.”
When jurors talk after the trial with friends and family, Peng said, “It’s my hope you can tell them, ‘I chose life.”‘
Ballman was killed on Sept. 20, 1979, sometime after leaving her older sister’s home at 7:30 p.m.
Linda Benjamin told jurors that her sibling moved to California after she did.
“When she first came out, I felt responsible for her well-being,” Benjamin said.
Ballman took classes at Glendale College and worked at a group home and residential treatment center for young women called Penny Lane.
“I hate that she … was murdered on my watch,” Benjamin said, reading from a journal she kept after her sister was killed.
“If I could have had only five more minutes with you it would have made my life more bearable,” she read. “I would gladly trade places with you to do the hard part. It’s just a thing I will never be able to understand,” she wrote in referencing “the tragedy and horror of your death.”
Benjamin referred more than once to Gurule as a monster and said she was not only sad, but angry “that coward, that monster is still walking around.”
Jurors found true special circumstance allegations of murder during the commission of a rape and murder with a prior conviction but deadlocked on a third special circumstance allegation — murder during the course of a robbery.
Gurule wasn’t charged with Ballman’s murder until 2010. Glendale police said semen evidence was recovered from the victim, who had been shot in the abdomen, but DNA analysis was not available at the time.
In 2004, Gurule’s DNA was submitted to a law enforcement database. When Glendale police re-opened an investigation into Ballman’s killing and submitted the semen evidence to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s crime lab, a match was made with Gurule’s DNA.
Gurule was 19 at the time of the killing and has been serving a life prison sentence since 1987 for the kidnap-murder of Bruno, which detectives believe was the result of a drug deal gone wrong.
—City News Service