A 69-year-old man who has spent 44 years behind bars for a gay-rage murder in Fullerton he says he didn’t commit is seeking to overturn his conviction, citing new evidence involving a jailhouse informant.
Guy Michael Scott, convicted in 1984 of first-degree murder and robbery and sentenced to 25 years to life, is seeking to overturn his conviction based on a new law requiring greater involvement in a killing — and on alleged violations of evidence laws, according to a motion filed by attorney Scott Sanders, who spearheaded litigation that led to the informant scandal that rocked Orange County in the case of Scott Dekraai, the worst mass killer in the county’s history.
Scott and co-defendant Peter McDonald, who was tried separately, were convicted in the 1981 killing of Larry Miner in the victim’s Fullerton apartment. A third co-defendant, Robert Neary, testified for the prosecution and had his murder charge dismissed, according to Sanders.
McDonald, who has since died, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole after prosecutors failed twice to prevail in the death penalty phases of his trial.
Scott, who has been denied parole multiple times, was convicted based on the testimony of Neary, Sanders said.
“The successful prosecution of Scott hinged on the believability of Neary,” Sanders said. “Neary described how he, Scott and McDonald were invited to stay at Miner’s apartment. When they woke up the following day, Miner allegedly propositioned McDonald. McDonald turned furious. Miner was quickly tied up, beaten and stabbed. The next day Miner was found dead underneath a mattress and a filing cabinet. The cause of death was asphyxiation. Miner’s wallet and car had been stolen.”
Sanders said McDonald was “unarguably the leader of the violence, but what Neary’s description of Scott’s role and his own changed over time — with Scott’s violence growing and his own violence diminishing.”
Sanders’ argument takes aim at former Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas, the original prosecutor in the case, whose “impact on the integrity of this case has been enormous and indelible.”
Rackauckas flipped Neary from “accomplice to key prosecution witness after he and Fullerton detective Antonio Hernandez interviewed Neary,” Sanders alleged.
Rackauckas instructed Hernandez to turn off his tape recorder during their two-hour interview, Sanders said. Rackauckas, who handed off the case later to another prosecutor, was compelled to testify in two preliminary hearings about the Neary interview, Sanders said.
Rackauckas testified he wanted the tape recorder off because, “I didn’t want anybody to have a verbatim account of the entire interview I had with Neary the first time,” Sanders said.
“It was a simple, straightforward analysis by a win-at-all-costs prosecutor who reasonably feared that a conviction would be more difficult to achieve if the defense and a jury could study all that was said,” Sanders said.
Sanders argued that Neary was coerced into flipping on the co-defendants when he was threatened with the death penalty. Neary claimed Scott kicked and helped tie up the victim, Sanders said.
Sanders accused Rackauckas of leading efforts from 1998 through 2018 to “hide truths about how jailhouse informant evidence was obtained and disclosed in Orange County…” That same argument was made in the unraveling of the death-penalty case against Dekraai, who ultimately pleaded guilty to the mass killings and escaped the ultimate punishment.
Rackauckas is also accused in the motion of telling a detective to delay writing a report about an interview with jailhouse informant Craig Lunsford, who said Neary admitted to cutting the victim with a knife, according to Sanders.
“This admission by Neary would have devastated his credibility at the preliminary hearing, particularly because Neary had failed to admit using the knife,” Sanders said.
Neary allegedly told Lunsford that he “played Tic Tac Toe” with the weapon on (Miner’s) ass,” according to Sanders.
That report was turned over to the defense after the first preliminary hearing, prompting the prosecution team to claim Hernandez misunderstood who Neary was talking about, Sanders argued. District Attorney investigator Thomas Icenogle did a second interview with Lunsford to allow for Neary to remain a star witness, Sanders argued.
The first complaint was kicked due to the issue with the Lunsford statement, forcing prosecutors to refile it.
Sanders and an investigator in February went to New York City to confront Neary.
“Although his identity was confirmed, Neary insisted he was not Neary and slammed the door shut,” Sanders said.
That appeared to halt any attempt to overturn Scott’s conviction, but weeks later, Senior Deputy District Attorney Kristin Bracic, who has been assigned the case, started looking for evidence, Sanders said.
Bracic found a 1982 interview with jailhouse informant David Vogel by Icenogle, Sanders said. It took place days after the questioning of Lunsford, Sanders said.
“According to Vogel, Neary had admitted to cutting the victim,” Sanders said.
That evidence would have given defense attorney John Barnett more ammunition to impeach the credibility of the star witness, Sanders said.
“The defense, however, cannot call Vogel as a witness, as he too has died,” Sanders said.
Sanders argued that it’s unlikely the Vogel interview was provided to the defense in Scott’s trial.
Bracic found the tape with other cassettes wrapped in paper stamped “discovery complied with,” but there is no record of it having been turned over to defense attorneys, Sanders said.
Sanders accused Rackauckas of trying to block access to a log of evidence related to informants through the years and misuse of the snitches to win convictions.
The District Attorney’s Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.